BEES BEES BEES

"There’s a dirty Trump trick you need to look out for. He used it in 2020 to try to overturn the election, and he’s going to do it again. But it doesn’t work if you know it’s coming.

Watch out for Trump to exploit something elections experts call the “red mirage” to prematurely declare victory before all the votes are counted.

You see, in almost every election, Republicans appear to take an early lead. That’s the red mirage. Then that lead gets smaller throughout the night, which is called the “blue shift.” This happens because Republican votes tend to be counted before Democratic votes.

It’s not magic. Votes are counted by precinct, and Democrats tend to live in more densely populated, urban precincts, while Republicans tend to live in more sparsely populated, rural ones. It just takes longer to count the votes in a precinct with a lot of people than in a precinct with fewer people.

Also, Democrats are more likely to vote by mail, and mail-in votes take longer to count. Some can't even be counted until Election Day.

The 2024 election will be close, and early in the night, Trump is likely to appear to be ahead and again use that early lead to falsely claim victory. Mirages can be confusing, but if you know what they are, you won’t be fooled by them.

"We have to wait, there's a lady in here!"

"That's not a lady, he has a mustache! We can be in here!"

"Some ladies have mustaches! And she has boobs!"

"Well some guys have boobs! Like Uncle Jake!"

"Uncle Jake is fat!"

At this point I could not contain a chuckle and both whirled around with identical looks of panic on their faces. I smiled and said "it's alright for you guys to be in here so your sister has help, don't worry. And I'm both! That's why I have boobs and a mustache. Some folks are just built that way"

(In unison) "Ooooooh!"

(older boy) "So do you use Sir or Ma'am or both?"

"Both, but I prefer Sir"

"Cool! Well thanks Sir! We have to help our sister now!"

This was in a small town country truck stop and both boys had "Murica" type stuff on and neither of them had any issue at all with these concepts. Their mom approached me while I was in line about 10 minutes later and apologized for them bothering me in the bathroom (they had told her about the interaction) and she and I had a lovely little chat too. I got to introduce her to the term "intersex" and her reply was "I think I've heard of that before! I didn't know that was the word for it. Amazing how many different ways God can make people!"

Do you play daily NY Times games like Wordle, Connections, Spelling Bee, or Strands? The NYT Tech Guild workers who make those games possible are currently ON STRIKE and asking you to not cross the digital picket line.

California

Colorado

Connecticut

D.C.

Hawaii

Idaho

Illinois

Iowa - recent polls indicate state could flip from red to blue

Maine

Maryland

Michigan

Minnesota

Montana

Nevada

New Hampshire

New Mexico

New York

North Carolina - swing state! Could go red or blue

North Dakota - voter registration not required

Utah

Vermont

Virginia

Washington

Wisconsin - swing state! Could go red or blue

Wyoming

You can go here for more info on voter registration

I also have a huge list of voting resources here

HEYYY the Steam Summer Sale has concluded, so I can finally share all of the fake game art I got to make for it!! Woo

The idea for this sale was to design a bunch of relatively convincing key art to hide in the Steam storefront, but that would be a little weird on second glance—Erik Wolpaw and Jay Pinkerton came up with the names/descriptions for all of Clorthax’s fake games, and then I just tried to match their energy in the final art.

Here's to all the burnouts.

Hélène Bautista

Justine