Avatars, Superheroes, Wizards, and Sleuths Oh My!

the best thing about Ilvermorny being in Massachusetts is that this brings up a bunch of stupid fucking Massachusetts headcanons about wizardry: 

-Professors with disgusting Boston accents 

-The platform for Ilvermorny HAS to be at North station

-enchanted MBTA commuter rail 

-the division between NY and Mass wizards going deeper than house rivalry 

-the Red Sox curse being ACTUAL dark magic 

-confirmed wand fights over Sox vs Yankees and Patriots vs literally everyone not from new England

-a Dunkin Donuts suspiciously close to the school that is always looking for workers because people are terrified of working the nightshift there. 

-Magical Dunkin Donuts 

-There’s an underground passage at the school (a la Whomping Willow and One Eyed Witch) that exits at the old Harvard station.

-On the train ride to Ilvermorny, students like to fire off spells. The stray magic wreaks havoc on cars between the station and the school, making them nearly impossible to drive and making the drivers seem exceedingly reckless. MASSHOLES EXPLAINED 

-The real reason the Pumpkinfest riots happened at Keane State was because Ilvermorny wizards decided to crash and cast some drunk spells without realizing the consequences, once something caught fire, people rioted. Student wizards are not well liked in New Hampshire

-There’s a reason why Boston is “the hub of the universe”: wizarding folk powerful in astrology and divination gather there for readings more accurate and powerful than anywhere else.

-There was a gang of dark wizard students, who caused an unbelievable amount of mayhem and panic one day. The local magical authorities realized it would be almost impossible to totally wipe the memory from everyone’s minds. One wizard joked, saying that they’re going to come up with some ridiculous excuse like a family of ducks trying to walk through the city.

- “Can we hike up to the school today?? I wanna visit!” “I told you, we can only hike up on breaks. You’ll get your letter next year and then you’ll be there all the time.”

- Personally offended there isn’t official transportation from their family’s houses, and they either apparate with their parents, use floo powder, or just drive the fuck up there because no matter if you’re a wizard or a muggle you still have to learn to drive in western MA. 

- Smalltime rivals with the Bostonians and the Bostonians think they’re from another planet but “You don’t even have enough trees to have pukwudgies in your damn city! I hung out with a couple this summer when my family went for a hike!” and “What do you mean you’re an hour away from a broomstick servicing shop? Mine’s 3 minutes away.”

- Can co-exist with the New York wizards but bring up sports and without a mediator things can get out of hand. Also Berkshires wizards will sit around and point out NY wizards. Not in a mean way, just to each other. You can just tell. 

- Muggle studies students take jobs at Tanglewood and the Clark during the summer. 

- Salem is literally 3 hours away from Mt Greylock so it’s not really feasible as a Hogsmeade but 6th and 7th years all like to make a group trip. 

- HIPPIE WIZARDS FROM NORTHAMPTON I rest my case.

Today there were advancements by the assad and russian forces into the city and aleppo is about to fall. 100,000 people are trapped in. Public executions are reported. Photos and videos from the city are scarce which is only more terrifying. Activists and journalists have all sent their last or farewell messages and there is no way out.

this morning i decided i was too busy to draw anything for kuroo’s birthday. this evening i came to understand the things that are important to me

After numerous checks and re-checks, it’s been found to have definitely come from an extraterrestrial source.

It was broadcast at 1420 MHz. This frequency isn’t used by Earth communications for science reasons. It’s a frequency which neutral hydrogen emits at in interstellar space and is useful in radio astronomy.

Interestingly, emitting a strong signal at this frequency is a likely way to get someone’s attention if there’s anyone listening, because any other radio astronomers in the universe will definitely know of it and be making observations of it.

That really is a very strong signal. Against the backgrounds, it looks to me like about 30 standard deviations (give or take).

Actually, that globular cluster (M55) is just the closest object to the transmission’s source. It appeared to have come from a region of mostly empty space (though it’s worth remembering that distant red dwarfs or brown dwarfs could be too faint to be detectable).

The astronomer who found this and scrawled “Wow!” on that printout was Jerry Ehman at the Big Ear radio telescope in Ohio. Credit where it’s due.

Despite a lot of efforts, this kind of signal has only ever been recorded this one time. There’s a chance we may never know what it was.

The electoral college does not vote until December 19th. We have 40 days.

What does this mean?

Right now, the presidential election results are only a PROJECTION of the election outcome. They are PRELIMINARY RESULTS. A candidate still needs to earn 270 electoral votes to win. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, which means that more than 50% of the voters wanted her for president. The electoral college shouldn’t guarantee an override of the public’s opinion– and it doesn’t have to.

There are 21 states that do NOT restrict which candidate the electors vote for. Out of these 21, Hillary lost the following:

As you can see, these states are worth 166 electoral votes. As it currently stands, Hillary Clinton is projected to receive 232 votes. Trump is projected to win 306. This means that 37 votes need to be taken away from Trump to bring him down to 269. Hillary Clinton needs 38 votes ADDED to win 270. These electoral voters can also abstain, which means that they can refuse to vote for either candidate. If 37 of the voters within these states abstain then no candidate will have reached the required 270. In this case, the vote would be taken to the House.

Trump won Pennsylvania, a state that typically votes blue, by less than 100,000 votes. While it is highly unlikely to get all 20 electoral voters to cross party lines and vote democrat, it also isn’t impossible to convince a few of them to be “faithless electors.” We only need to convince 38 out of the 166. That is 23%. There are SIXTEEN states we need to focus our attention on.

A move like this would be unprecedented. However, as we all saw on November 8th, odds don’t guarantee reality. Trump had a less than 20% chance of winning, yet given the circumstances, enough people came together and made it happen. We can make this happen. 

Ask yourself this: What do we have left to lose? We can stay complacent and accept that this country will be run by a racist, sexist, islamophobic, homophobic, ablest bigot, or we can at least try. 

How?

SPREAD THE WORD. Trend #NotMyPresident to let people know that we do not accept being led by a man who does not care about our wellbeing. Email your professors, email the dean of your colleges. The last thing a university wants is negative press. Millenials can take a stand, but that doesn’t mean we have to be the only ones. Church-led events helped bring a lot of disillusioned voters to the polls. Spread the word in any way possible, whether it be on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, or even in person. Stage a peaceful protest. Hand out flyers. Let the people around you know that you don’t accept this man as your leader when he won’t even accept you as a citizen with your designated rights.

These 166 people need to face the consequences of electing this man. 

Is this possible?

Yes, I wouldn’t have made the post without doing my research. Read the following paragraphs, taken from archives.gov:

Are there restrictions on who the Electors can vote for?

There is no Constitutional provision or Federal law that requires Electors to vote according to the results of the popular vote in their states. Some states, however, require Electors to cast their votes according to the popular vote. (The 16 states listed above do NOT restrict their electors to this rule.) These pledges fall into two categories—Electors bound by state law and those bound by pledges to political parties.

The U.S. Supreme Court has held that the Constitution does not require that Electors be completely free to act as they choose and therefore, political parties may extract pledges from electors to vote for the parties’ nominees. Some state laws provide that so-called “faithless Electors” may be subject to fines or may be disqualified for casting an invalid vote and be replaced by a substitute elector. The Supreme Court has not specifically ruled on the question of whether pledges and penalties for failure to vote as pledged may be enforced under the Constitution. No Elector has ever been prosecuted for failing to vote as pledged.

SOURCE: https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/electors.html

Can Hillary still receive votes from the electoral college even though she’s conceded?

Think about it, Mitt Romney lost the 2012 election. All of the electoral voters didn’t immediately vote for President Obama the second he conceded. The election still ended up being 332 votes to 206. Not 538 unanimous votes for Barack Obama.

“For starters, it doesn’t matter if a losing candidate concedes, as far as the Electoral College process goes, according to Amy Bunk, director of legal affairs and policy at the Office of the Federal Register, among other experts.”

SOURCE: https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2016/10/20/can-losing-presidential-candidate-actually-challenge-election-results/s42xw8h3pcwFcXx7rsS14I/story.html

Conceding does not take a candidate’s name off of the ballot that the electoral voters see. In the past, “faithless electors” have voted for the projected losing candidate, or even voted third party. 

SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faithless_elector#List_of_faithless_electors