An Endless Source of Useless Information

And that’s SO MUCH of the rhetoric around the EC. People talk about how they don’t want “Urban” or “City” people making choices, and 99% of the time, that’s just code for “black” and “brown” and “Jewish” and “Gay” because you bigots think that 1. Only minorities live in cities and minorities ONLY live in cities and 2. You don’t want anyone who isn’t a WASP-y Farmer voting apparently. 

Like, you’re argument is literally “cities have more poor brown people, and I don’t think their votes should count.” So FUCK YOU.

Also, cities WOULDN’T dominate in the popular vote.

Really? What about the BIG CITIES?

#1 New York City. 8,601,186

#2LosAngelesCalifornia 4,057,841

#3Chicago,Illinois 2,679,044

#4Houston,Texas 2,359,480

#5Phoenix,Arizona 1,711,356

#6 Philadelphia,Pennsylvania 1,576,596

Those 6 cities, combined, have less than 22 million people. The US has 327 million.

And this is my point- the US is not made of a small handful of huge cities. The vast majority of the country lives in SMALL cities and towns, under a million people each, and their suburbs.

So, no, with the Popular Vote, you could not pander just to the biggest cities and be done with it. If you add up EVERY SINGLE CITY with more than 100,000 people in it (Which is 311 cities), that’s still only 94 million. 28% of the US population.

Even if ALL the ~poor brown people~ that you want to stop from voting lived EXCLUSIVELY in cities (which they don’t, you fucking racist), the popular vote DOESN’T actually empower cities. 

The EC ALSO doesn’t actually help rural (”white land owning”) populations (you fucking racist, you don’t even know the racial or economic breakdown of the rural areas you claim to care about). In fact, the EC makes things worse for rural areas. 46 states have an urban majority, and  “winner-take-all” laws that have been enacted by state legislatures in 48 states. So if there is a stark divide between rural and urban populations, in 46 states, the urban votes will win and 100% of the electoral points will go to the urban side (Where YOU think all the poor brown people live, again, you fucking racist).

However, in a popular vote system, no one’s vote would get thrown away like that, and everyone’s vote would be counted equally in the final tally.The popular vote would actually give MORE voice to rural populations that are all but completely erased in our current system.

And it is important to remember that in reality cities do not vote in perfect blocks. Neither do states. Even the most liberal city has conservative voters and even the deepest rural hellholes in Texas has progressives (I was one of them until I moved for college!) Those people matter. Those people should count.

Why not have a system where CITIZENS elect the president? Why does it matter which state someone lives in, if all votes should count equally? (I mean, I know YOU think that POOR BROWN PEOPLE shouldn’t be voting, you fucking racist, but ya know, for the rest of us who actually value the idea of a democracy) 

Mine:

- when I was teaching my dog Pinkman to boop she thought she was getting food for hitting her head on things so for like two full weeks she ran around indiscriminately smashing her face into walls and furniture and then asking for a treat

Training him to sit means he sits on my feet whenever I’m carrying food.  I have tripped over him.  A lot.  He especially loves plopping his ass on my feet as I open the fridge. 

Platform?  Oh shit, that just means he learned how LEDGES work and now he treats the entire house like his own personal platforming video game.  I had to re-arrange the kitchen to move the chairs further from the counters.

High five?  He repeatedly smacks my hand if I’m holding food, because he assumes that’s the same thing as a high five.

The ultimate result of scent-training was that he hunted down the box I kept scented things in and tore it apart.  I MEAN, I GUESS THAT’S THE SPIRIT OF THE GAME BUT STILL.

Food excites her.

Training excites her.

Except...she absolutely refused to learn to close them again. Utterly refused. Did not see the point to doing that. She, in fact, became adamant that all doors should forever be open from that point onwards. No room in the house was allowed to have a closed door ever again. If I got up to close a door she would just get up and open it again. If I went to the toilet and locked the bathroom she would stand outside trying the handle over and over again and occasionally howling about the fact that her magic trick had stopped working.

The only thing that saved us from her opening the front door and escaping was that it used a knob rather than a handle.

Beautiful Ballet Portrait Of Performers Claiming The Streets Of NYC

Ballet is an intimately physical art that has been merged with the beauty of music, photography and dance, captured by Puerto Rico born, NYC-based photographer Omar Robles’ camera on the streets of New York city.