STOP. BLAMING. THIRD. PARTY. VOTERS!

I voted for Clinton because she was the least shitty of the four shitty available options, even though I still hate her for stealing the election from Bernie. But the numbers I've seen (source: Wolfram Alpha) show that Johnson only got 3.3% of votes, and if those voters had voted for Trump like they would, Trump would've had 52% of the vote. Jill Stein only got 1% of the vote. So if third party voters had voted for one of the big two, instead of Hillary winning the popular vote 48% to Trump's 47.8%, the result would have been Trump 51.1%, Clinton 49%. Without third party voters this year, Trump would have won the popular election

So can we PLEASE stop blaming third party voters now?

Honestly, if you want to blame someone, blame the electoral college morons who voted that orange shitstain into office despite Clinton winning the popular vote. From the way I understand it, the electoral college voters don't have to vote the way they're supposed to or at all, won't get counted if they fall asleep on the job, and the final vote is them RAISING THEIR HANDS. There is SO MUCH wrong with the electoral college, we need to scrap the whole system. And THOSE morons, whose names nobody even knows, are the ones to blame for the orange Cheeto from Hell being Resident.

Also, of the groups you mentioned, the only ones who had any actual negative impact are the ones who voted Trump to fuck the system. The only other group (that you didn't mention) that might have had a negative impact are the people who don't understand how write-in votes work and wrote in pointless votes for Bernie when he wasn't even running anymore.

Oh yeah, and all the people who didn't vote.

But for fuck's sake, PLEASE stop blaming third party voters! Blame electoral college, blame Hillary for stealing the nomination, blame DNC for fucking over Bernie, but third party voters DID. NOT. LOSE. HILLARY. THE. VOTE. If anything, they saved her from losing harder than she did!

This was a response to this post.

human rights violation

Something just occurred to me, that should've occurred a long time ago*: Black people being judged by all-white juries are being denied the right to be judged by a jury of their peers. White people are not the peers of black people, by any metric. In order to actually be getting that fundamental right, they would have to be judged by an all-black jury.

* = Or, more likely, something that occurred to me ages ago but I've only just worked out the words for.

Weird feeling

About half the time when I start reading a book, especially a popular book, I get this weird feeling like "What if I'm hallucinating the contents of this book? How do I know we're all experiencing the same words?" It takes time and a lot of other people quoting from it and stuff for the feeling to pass.

Bones

Has there ever been any official word on whether Temperance Brennan of Bones is on the autism spectrum? Because she so clearly is.

Voting age cap

There needs to be an age cap on voting. Nobody older than 80 should be allowed to vote anymore, because they won't be around long enough to feel the consequences.

The trouble with the electoral college

"[UPDATED VERSION!] The Trouble With The Electoral College" (Watch on YouTube)

Electoral college metaphor

You know that scene in the first Harry Potter book/movie, where Slytherin wins the House Cup fair and square, and Griffindor is dead last, and then Dumbledore just decides "LOL, nope, gonna make Griffindor win because fuck you"? Well imagine that, only without Harry or any of the others earning those points, it's just Dumbledore deciding he hates Slytherin so he's gonna make Griffindor win just because. Imagine how you'd feel if you were one of the Slytherins.

That. That is the electoral college. The electoral college is Dumbledore in that situation. Just fucking up shit for the hell of it.

Friends vs. acquaintences

On the page of a friend of mine on FaceBook (real friend, not just a "friend"), she was doing that thing where she was blaming third party candidates, and I copy-pasted my post from earlier. Her response was "Valid and well said point. The electoral college is for sure the common enemy. And don't get me started on the DNC."

To which I said, "I've known you long enough to count you a legitimate friend, as opposed to just a FaceBook "friend," to feel capable of giving you more consideration. Same goes for the person I made the comment to originally. Strangers or people I don't really know well, I tend to get pissier with because I don't give a shit about the opinions of people I don't know or care about. With friends, I do care, so I'm calmer and more logical.

Personally, I think social media should have a base Acquaintences and a seperate Friends. But then, I suppose most people are extroverts and consider anyone who holds still more than 5 seconds to be friends, whereas I'm a hell of a lot more picky. I'm sure there are people who think I'm friends with them, and I just consider them somebody I happen to know. When I call someone a friend, I damn well mean it."

~

Which, yeah. Especially after living with my roommate for a few years now, I can see the differences. She has such a very loose definition of "friend" that, especially given how so many of her "friends" treat her (like shit, or like a non-entity), I occasionally point out that her definition of friend is my definition of "acquaintence." If anyone treated me the way some of her "friends" do, I'd be dumping them in a heartbeat and never looking back. But here she's still agonizing six months later about giving up on someone who did nothing but ghost her for years (only talking/texting with her when it suited them, ignoring her completely the rest of the time). I wouldn't tolerate that bullshit for even a week without a damned good excuse, let alone years.

Anyway, so my levels of social stuff:

* Enemies
* Strangers (Subdivisions: A. Mobile background objects. B. Hot/cute! C. THREAT! D. HSS!!!)
* Acquaintences
* Acquaintences+ (Quite a few pagan meetup people in here)
* Friends (Most people I consider friends are here. Subdivided into Internet Friends, RL friends, Pagan Meetup Friends.)
* Friends+ (My roomie is in this one. Not sure who else, if anyone. She might expect to be in Best Friends or Best Friends+ but there are Reasons why she's here instead. One of those Reasons being Trust Issues. Another being Ugh Extroverts. There are more, but most of those are Occult Reasons - occult as in hidden.)
* Best friends (Three people in this column currently, always room for more; no, I won't say who. Don't ask.)
* Best friends+ (Two people in this column currently, always room for more; no, I won't say who. Don't ask.)

Anyone who knows me well enough knows I have little to no patience for bullshit or shitty behavior from strangers. Same is true of acquaintences. People in Friends and higher deserve and gets a lot more patience and consideration from me. (If it weren't for Reasons, roomie would likely be at Best Friends just for the amount of patience I give her.) But no matter how much tolerance and patience I have for people, I always have hard limits. Betrayal is a surefire hard limit. I once knew someone I put in the Friends category, and after a betrayal, they were put soundly in the Enemies category, in the subcategory of "I Wish Them An Agonizing Death Alone and Forgotten By All Loved Ones." So yeah, betrayal can make me go from warm caring kind hearted person to cold angry sociopath in regards to that person. Only without the murdering.

But I'm pretty good at keeping the bad apples out of my Friends groups, so it doesn't happen often. In fact, I can only think of that one. Wait, no... two. It happened twice that I can remember. (My sister doesn't really count because I'm not quite to that level of anger about it yet. I'd forgive her if she apologized. Probably. Which is not something I could do with someone in the "I Wish Them An Agonizing Death etc" category.)