Icon by @ThatSpookyAgent. Call me Tir or Julian. 37. He/They. Queer. Twitter: @tirlaeyn. ao3: tirlaeyn. BlueSky: tirlaeyn. 18+ Only. Star Trek. The X-Files. Sandman. IwtV. OMFD. Definitionless in this Strict Atmosphere.
In North Carolina, early voting is your best chance to make your that you will be able to vote. Early voting ends on the 5th (Saturday).
The last days to vote early in North Carolina are Friday the 4th, and Saturday the 5th. If you’re reading this post on Friday or Saturday, please try to vote today if you haven’t voted already.
You can vote today (Friday the 4th) or tomorrow (Friday the 5th) *even if you have not already registered to vote*. If you are not already registered to vote, you will not be able to vote on election day. You must vote during early voting.
You must vote in the county you live in. Every county has at least one early voting site, some have more. You can check where your early voting site is on the North Carolina Board of Election website. http://vt.ncsbe.gov/ossite/
If you are not already registered to vote, you will need to present an ID. (And it’s a good idea to bring one anyway.) These are IDs North Carolina accepts during on-site registration for early voting:
a NC driver’s license
photo ID from a government agency
student photo ID with a school document showing the student’s address
or a utility bill, bank statement, payroll stub, or document from any government agency with your name and current address.
If you are already registered to vote, you do *not* need to show ID in order to vote in person. (But it’s a good idea to bring one anyway.)
If you are trans, the National Center For Trans Equality guide “Voting While Trans: Preparing for Voter ID Laws” may be helpful. It’s also helpful information for anyone whose identity may be challenged for any reason.
If you have been convicted of a felony in the past: If you have served your sentence and are not currently on probation or parole, you *are* eligible to vote in North Carolina. You do not need to apply for restoration of rights, but you *do* need to re-register to vote (your registration was cancelled when you were convicted). You need to re-register to vote, even if you were registered before. If you haven’t already re-registered to vote since you were convicted, you will need to vote during Early Voting (Which ends Saturday the 5th).
If you have a disability and need assistance voting, North Carolina requires poll workers to ask you whether you want assistance, and if so, who you want it from. They are also explicitly required to accept non-verbal forms of communication, including your answers to yes or no questions that they ask. These rules apply both during early voting and on election day. From the memo sent to polling officials about communicating with voters with disabilities:
“”””A qualified voter seeking assistance at the voting place must provide his or her current name and address and request permission to obtain assistance, stating the reasons.4 The requirement to state a reason for the assistance does not require the voter to provide details of the disability. Certain disabilities may affect voters’ ability to vocalize their request, but federal law still provides that such a disabled voter is entitled to assistance. Accordingly, elections officials should exercise their best efforts to understand and respond to individual requests for assistance, however communicated. State administrative law provides that an election official may prompt the voter, where appropriate.5
An election official may pose “yes” or “no” questions, may allow the voter to point out the person from whom he or she wishes to receive assistance, or may use the Voter Assistance Section of the Station Guide as a visual tool to ensure that voters are enabled to communicate their request for assistance. In many cases, a voter in need of assistance will be accompanied by another individual. However, unless the voter requests the assistance of the accompanying individual, that individual is not entitled to assist the voter. The voter may instead request assistance from election judges or an election assistant.
If you are unable to speak, the election official might ask you to point to options from their election rules handbook. It may be worth familiarizing yourself with that manual and making sure that you will be able to point to the choice you intend. (Or printing it out and bringing a copy to point to yourself). If you are unable to say your name and address, it may be a good idea to bring ID. (It is not legal to require it of you when other voters are not required to present ID, but your ID may be the fastest way to effectively communicate your identify and eligibility to the polling official in a way that they will accept). Disability Rights North Carolina has more information about disability voting rights in NC.
If you are reading this after the 5th and you need to vote on election day itself: A voter ID law was passed this year, but it was also struck down by the courts. So people *tried* to require IDs, and some people may be under the impression that you need IDs in order to vote in North Carolina. Most voters do not need an ID to vote in person. “If there was a problem with verifying the information on your registration form” you may be asked to present a current photo ID *or* a utility bill, bank statement, payroll stub, or document from a government agency. So if you have any of those documents, bring them anyway.
There may be people outside the polls trying to trick you into not voting. Some of them may try to pass themselves off as election officials. They might lie to you about the requirements, or they might try to check your ID and tell you that it’s not valid.
Election officials themselves may also illegally try to tell you that you need ID in order to vote, or may illegally reject an ID they’re required to accept.
If anyone, official or not, tells you that you can’t vote, don’t give up on voting. There may be volunteer lawyers outside the polls who can help you assert your right to vote. If you are able to use a phone, you can also call the (nonpartisan) Election Protection Hotline 866-OUR-VOTE (866-687-8683) for help http://www.866ourvote.org/pages/2016-live-hotline-hours-and-dates
The National Federation of the Blind Election Day Hotline (1-877-632-1940)
Disability Rights NC at 877-235-4210 (888-268-5535 TTY)
tl;dr If you vote in North Carolina and haven’t voted yet, your best chance of being able to cast a vote is to vote on Friday the 4th or Saturday the 5th at in-person Early Voting. Scroll up for information on voting rights in North Carolina during Early Voting and on Election Day, including information for disabled voters.
“ In August, 1968, the country was still reeling from the assassination of Martin Luther King four months earlier, and the race riots that followed on its heels. Nightly news showed burning cities, white flight, radicals and reactionaries snarling at each other across the cultural divide.
“A brand new children’s show out of Pittsburgh, which had gone national the previous year, took a different approach. Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood introduced Officer Clemmons, a black police officer who was a kindly, responsible authority figure, kept his neighborhood safe, and was Mr. Roger’s equal, colleague and neighbor.
“Around the first anniversary of Martin Luther King’s death, Mr. Rogers invited Officer Clemmons to join him in soaking their tired feet in a plastic wading pool. And there they were, brown feet and pasty white feet, side by side in the water. Silently, contemplatively, without comment.
“25 years later, when the actor playing Officer Clemmons retired, his last scene on the show revisited that same wading pool, this time reminiscing. Officer Clemmons asked Mr. Rogers what he’d been thinking during their silent interlude a quarter century before. Fred Rogers’ answer was that he’d been thinking of the many ways people say “I love you.”
On NPR they were talking to this guy who specializes in created languages, who does all the languages for like Game of Thrones, Penny Dreadful, and a bunch of sci-fi and fantasy movies.
I applauded when the interviewer asked the guy if he ever considered using obscure native languages because “It’s not like anybody would notice,” and he scoffed like “Are you asking me if I’m gonna take someone’s cultural heritage and ascribe it to aliens or demons or elves? Because the answer is no.”
its not like anyone would would notice?!??! what they think native people dont watch tv or something?
I’ve read some interviews with the dude and he seems pretty decent afaik. He talked a lot about loaning ideas and concepts more than specific terms from other languages for creating the GoT languages.
I thought it was interesting that he would reference specific geographies to compare to the GoT geographies and then model the languages off that. He mentioned in one place not wanting Dothraki to just be defined by how guttural it was, but to use that for nuance and character.
It’s pretty neat, apparently they have conferences and gatherings to talk about “invented” languages.
These are diamond-tipped indenter heads. They are used to inflict ludicrous pressure upon various shit in order to measure the hardness of said shit. Recently, one of these was used to measure the hardness of a certain animal’s shell, and, instead of crushing the ever-loving fuck out of it, it found serious resistance.
The aforementioned animal is a snail.
Let me spell this out for ya. There is a snail that can resist the onslaught from an industrial-grade diamond applied with the pressure of several metric fucktonnes. A. Snail. That. Can. Resist. A. Diamond. Indenter.
Just imagine stepping on one of these guys. Instead of breaking their shells like those of usual snails, you’d break your own fucking ankle.
Jesus trilobitic Christ.
Today’s Episode: the Scaly-Foot Gastropod
Just look at this little piece of shit. Look at it and say to my face it doesn’t look like a tank.
What we’ve got here is the rather lamely-named scaly-foot gastropod, also known by the considerably more badass-sounding names of iron snail and
Chrysomallon squamiferum. The SFG hails from the deep-sea thermal vents known as black smokers, deep-sea vents from which water gushes constantly. That water, by the way, originates from below the mantle.
The proximities of black smokers are perfectly lightless, unforgiving badlands, with water rich enough in poisonous sulphuric chemicals to perform the chemical equivalent of curbstomping on any “superior” lifeform that dares stick it’s overspecialized, prissy ass down there, heat up to 450 degrees Celsius (one thirteenth of the temperature of the Sun’s surface) and pressures that could turn any land-dwelling scum into a Flatlander within seconds. If creatures want to survive here, they must either be hyper-effective murder-machines, or damn nigh unkillable.
The SFG’s predators, such as venomous, killer cone snails with bionic harpoon guns evolved from their own “teeth”, and car-wrecking carnivorous crabs that kill snails by pressing down on their shells for days with jagged ultra-hard pincers specifically designed to do this belong in the first category.
The SFG itself belongs in the second.
Hoooly shit does it ever.
The unkillability itself is obtained by using the chemosynthetic bacteria lurking in its glands to absorb and mineralize the poisonous iron-sulphides the water is overabundant with, making them non-poisonous for the snail. It then coats its shell with the minerals, constructing an unique three-layer structure no other gastropods possess. None.
To sum it up, the outer layer, used to block the bulk of the attack, is made up of greigite (Fe3S4), a ridiculously hard mineral. Then comes a middle layer of squishy organic matter purposed to absorb the shock of impacts, dents and blows. Finally, an inner layer of aragonite (CaCO3), designed to prevent asshole crabs from sticking their nasty claws into the shell and picking it apart splinter by splinter.
How effective is it? Well, this armor is so much better than what we puny humans possess that the U.S. Army is actively conducting research about it with the hope of developing new armor using the same build. Yes, this shell is so unbreakable that it caused the a military to lose their heads over a goddamn sea snail. Go figure.
Also, according to biologists researching the SFG, if we covered oil pipes with the stuff, they could easily shrug off damage done by such trivial things as fucking icebergs,
Not bad from a snail, I say.
But that’s not all! Look at it again.
There is a reason it’s called Scaly-foot Gastropod.
Those are scales. Made out of iron minerals.
Iron minerals that are poisonous and magnetic.
The scales are there because of the tooth-harpoon-hurling killer snails. Namely, they serve to deflect the harpoons entirely. Deflective iron scales. On a snail.
Holy crap.
So let’s sum it up, shall we? There exists a snail that forges itself a magnetic armor made out of poisonous iron ore to fend off killer crabs and venomous sniper snails that hunt it in its habitat of a vent leading to the Earth’s mantle.
Oh, and they don’t really eat anything, relying on their chemosynthetic bacteria for sustenance instead. In layman’s terms, that means that the snail keeps itself running by oxidating the sulphides in the water, all of which are lethally poisonous to most lifeforms, including the snail itself. The only reason it survives is that the bacteria chemosynthetize the sulphides, enabling the snail to quite literally live off of poison.
This molluscoid tank is ridiculously metal in more ways than one.
It still blows my mind that the Voting Rights Act wasn’t passed until I was
five years old, and that now, forty-eight years later, the GOP has succeeded in gutting it.
They claim it isn’t needed anymore, because “institutionalized racism isn’t a problem anymore.”
Yeah, explain how “racism is over” to the hundreds of unarmed black civilians shot by law enforcement every year, the thousands more who receive harsher sentences than their white counterparts for similar crimes. Oh, and explain why a pathetic excuse for a human being who calls Mexicans rapists and murderers has enough backing to be a presidential candidate.
Hell, one of the main architects of the still ongoing “war on drugs,” complete with police militarization, has admitted in interviews that it was specifically engineered to target black people and anti-war activists–because they couldn’t figure out a way to make being black or non-conservative illegal.
