I voted Uncommitted in the primary so that Biden and the Democrats would get a count of how many people took the issue seriously. Primaries are a great place for message votes.

I also donated, volunteered, and voted for the Biden and then Harris campaigns, and didn’t hold back any support in public. I had no illusions about how bad it would (now will) be with Trump in the Whitehouse.

We need never be afraid of the vote of informed Americans. It is only the ignorant voter we have to fear, ignorant politically, no matter how fine his house or how expensive his schooling. Such people have never experienced democracy; they have merely enjoyed its benefits. It is hard to explain what democracy is; it is necessary to participate in it to understand it.

—Robert A. Heinlein, Take Back Your Government

Unfortunately, there seems to be an awful lot of ignorance out there today.

I wish 10 Republicans would eat racist for lunch, because then we’d be down to 9 Republicans!

Which indicates that policy is secondary to messaging. On every substantive policy metric, Democrats are better than Republicans. People even say they prefer Democratic policies over Republicans’ when polled, by wide margins. So it must be the messenger and the way the message is being conveyed that is losing elections. That’s not to say that policies don’t matter, they absolutely do, but if you’ve got great policies and shit messaging, then you’re not going to win voters over, no matter how much better you are.

Plata o plomo.

Kamala Harris voters, 2024: 70,356,521

People who claim to have been Kamala Harris voters, 2030: 100,000,000+

I heard an interview with a woman who said she voted Republican because, on the one hand, abortion “isn’t that big of a deal” and ought to be left up to the states, but on the other, “doctors shouldn’t be allowed to abort babies after they’re born.”

So this person thinks that doctors are murdering babies… and that should be allowed on a state by state basis. Which… boy oh boy, I’m not sure what to even do with a mind that works that way.

There’s still a lot of analysis still to be done, but the Pod Save America guys pointed out that the Harris campaign saw less slippage in states where they were actively competing on the ground than in solidly red states where they didn’t fight as hard. This indicates that the campaign did make a positive difference, just not enough to overcome the negatives.

The American electorate:

“There’s a horse. In the hospital.”

No I don’t! I tell the truth!

I’m just having a hard time imagining a scenario in which it would be offensive…

Plenty where it would be a little confusing. Sandra Dude O’Connor, or Susan Bro Anthony would take some explaining, at the least.

I loved swordfish steak the one time I had it, so I’d bet that Scylla, Charybdis, or the Kraken would be quite good.

Oh, also The Kraken is quite tasty.

One time in high school, I heard somebody yell “Steve, you [bundle of sticks], stop talking to your girlfriend and let’s go!” and Steve was in fact at the time talking to his girlfriend.

The sheer concentration of cognitive dissonance has stuck with me to this day.

This is the whole “if humans were going to have wings we’d have to redesign the whole organism from the ground up” fiasco all over again.

Blacula is legitimately fantastic. It’s full-on a story about the lingering violence springing from European colonialism and the slave trade.

Just one example: The main character is an African prince, and his name is Mamuwalde, but when Dracula turns him, he says “I curse you with my name! You shall be called BLACULA!” For the rest of the film, no one calls him Blacula, because his name is Mamuwalde! Except there was one subtitle that slipped and read something like “BLACULA: I lost her because of you!”, and I immediately thought, “Hey you subtitling asshole, his goddamn name is Mamuwalde!”

By the end of the movie I was rooting for him in the fight with the LAPD.

That boy needs therapy.

Suppose that Australia wants to become republic.

Scenario A: King Charles tries to oppose this. His opposition is overridden by, you know, democracy. Now he looks like even more of a schmuck for standing in the way of something that was going to happen anyway.

Scenario B: He doesn’t oppose it. Australia votes to become a republic, and seems like a cool guy for not standing in the way of the inevitable.

Seems like a pretty straightforward choice between options.

The Pop-up Book of Phobias is also great.

Nothing that makes noise or takes batteries.

Board books. Toddlers are murder on books with paper pages. Stick with classics like Goodnight Moon or Dr. Seuss, or if you want something more recent the Little Owl series by Divya Srinivasan, or Calm-Down Time by Elizabeth Verdick are really good.

Playground/beach toys, like a bucket / shovel / rake set that parents can keep in the car. They’ll likely get lost, so go for cheap and sturdy over premium and expensive.

Sidewalk chalk, like the huge fat ones.

The water based coloring books someone else mentioned are great, too. No cleanup (beyond the occasional water spill), they can be reused, and they’re great entertainment for the car.

And yeah, like others have said, coordinate with the parents.

And if you hate the parents, get a Furby knockoff or something else that makes noise.