Guys please pay attention to H.R 586, a bill introduced that would declare human life begins at fertilization.

Don’t let this bill slip by. Call your reps. Spread the word.

Here’s the link.

Getting real tired.

This has 23 co-sponsors from GA, AR, SC, TX, AZ, WI, OH, MO, TN, OK, VA, and IN. If you live in one of these states, these are your representatives. Link.

A white supremacist like Steve Bannon should be unacceptable as chief strategist in the White House, whether you supported Trump or not. President-elects have had to back down on appointments before, for comparatively minor reasons. Let’s not assume this is a done deal. 

Social media activism can help raise awareness, but concrete action is important. My friend offers these steps you can take to prevent this appointment:

1) If you live in the US, call your Senators and Representatives and Senators and tell them this is unacceptable. Note that the Senate must approve Cabinet appointments: http://www.senate.gov/senators/contact. [See script at end of post.]

2) Paul Ryan is feigning ignorance again. Call his office at (202) 225-3031 and let him know that this is not ok. Same with Majority Leader McConnell, (202) 224-2541. 

3) Call out the media when they report the Bannon appointment as a straight news story or refer to him as a “Breitbart executive” or a “provocateur,” but don’t call him what he is: a white supremacist, anti-Semite, and misogynist. Don’t let them normalize.

4) Where protests are ongoing, make this a focus, with signs, chants, etc. Speak out on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms.

5) Reach out to any groups you know that might join this effort, from religious groups to community organizations.

6) Contact other people of influence—college presidents, high-profile coaches and anyone else who has a public megaphone—and ask them to speak out against Bannon’s appointment.

7) Sign and share this petition from the Southern Poverty Law Center: https://www.splcenter.org/stephen-bannon-has-no-business-white-house

*If you are unsure of what to say when you call your reps, here is a script that worked for someone else: 

“Hi! My name is redacted and I am a constituent of Rep. Smith’s. I’m calling to see if and when he’ll be condemning the appointment of Steve Bannon to the White House.”

Them: The Congressman isn’t in yet today and I’m not sure anyone has had a chance to ask him.

“When you do, please also remind the Congressman that he has Jewish constituents in his district, including me, and we are highly concerned about having a white nationalist in the White House.”

Them: Hold please.

Them: Yes, just checked again, and we are not sure his response.

“OK. Well, I’d like a call back, [gives info] and I hope the Congressman is looking carefully at what this man has said and what he believes.”

I’ve already tweeted about this but here’s a longer post for all naturalized citizens especially those who have been visibly marked a “other” and aren’t part of the “again” when Trump says that he’s making America great “again.” 

(All of you sad white liberals can suck it up, buttercups, because some of us have some real work to do to prove that we belong here before President-elect Trump is sworn in. The stuff that applies to you is at the end.) 

Trump took the support of white suburban women, those are also the types of women who want to adopt foreign children like they’re some kind of charitable, exotic vase. This does not mean they will necessarily ensure citizenship for their adopted children. For foreign adoptees who were 18 by 2000, you are not covered under the current Child Citizenship Act (2000). If you do not have proof of naturalization and even though you were raised here your entire life, you can be deported: 

• “Korean American Adoptee Faces Unjust Deportation” (Angry Asian Man, 10/27/2016) 
  
• “A South Korean Man Adopted By Americans Prepares for Deportation” (NYT 11/1/2016)
  

This brings me to the point of my post: naturalized citizens, get proof of citizenship while Obama is still president. Naturalized citizens can use two documents to prove their citizenship: a U.S. passport and a Certificate of Naturalization (N-550, N-750). 

U.S. Passport info: 

• Routine processing for a new passport typically takes 4-5 weeks and there is an expedited processing option (2-3).
• Here is a link to info about passport application and/or renewal processes and needed documentation: https://travel.state.gov/content/passports/en/passports.html 
• Here is a PDF of fees to apply for a new passport or renew your old one: U.S. Passport Fees

Now, onto the Certificate of Naturalization: 

The Certificate of U.S. Naturalization (form N-550 or N-570) is a document issued by United States government as proof of a person having obtained U.S. citizenship through naturalization (a legal process of obtaining a new nationality). The Certificate of U.S. Naturalization has been issued since October 1, 1991 by the USCIS, and on or before September 30, 1991 by Federal Courts and particular State Courts. The United States Certificate of Naturalization is proof of an individual’s U.S. citizenship through naturalization. Only naturalized United States citizens can apply for a Certificate of U.S. Naturalization. If you are not a United States citizen, you must first apply for US citizenship. 

Source: Certificate of Naturalization

If you are already a naturalized U.S. citizen and don’t have a copy of your Certificate of Naturalization, you can apply for a new one here: Application for Replacement Certificate of Naturalization.  What you should know: 

• These were apparently issued in 1991 so the yellowed certificate of my citizenship from the 1980s on yellowing, delicate paper might not cut it. I am applying for a new certificate of naturalization but not before I scan both sides of it and find a notary to sign something that says they saw it. 
• The fee for another copy of Certificate of Naturalization: $345
• Trans* naturalized citizens, you can request a new Certificate of Naturalization due to a legal change in gender. Will this change under a Trump presidency? Who knows? Who wants to risk it? 

I saw a lot of white people who were SO SHOCKED and SO SURPRISED their fellow white people voted for Trump. I saw tweets about “hurting” for their friends who were women, immigrant, minority, trans, queer - and god help us if you fall into more than one of those categories. That’s not even to mention the undocumented and those on work or school visas - immigration has a lot of fucking narratives and its time you start realizing that. 

So, do you want to help? Here are two ways to start helping your immigrant friends. 

First, you can help your naturalized friends by getting their paperwork and money in order: planning, finding a translator, helping with gathering paperwork and looking over their paperwork before its submitted; lending emotional support, accompanying them to immigration services and/or other appointments. Take some of that #ImWithHer sentiments that led you to donate to Hillary’s campaign and buy “nasty women” t-shirts and give your friends cold hard cash so they have proof of citizenship either in the form of a U.S. passport or Certificate of Naturalization. 

Second, you can start writing your senator and pressuring them to support of bill S.2275 - Adoptee Citizenship Act of 2015 introduced by Sen. Am Klobuchar (D-MN) designed to prevent the kind of tragedy facing Adam Crapsner in the stories linked above: 

This bill amends the Immigration and Nationality Act to grant automatic citizenship to all qualifying children adopted by a U.S. citizen parent, regardless of the date on which the adoption was finalized.

An individual born outside of the United States who was adopted by a U.S. citizen parent shall automatically become a U.S. citizen when the following conditions have been fulfilled:

• the individual was adopted by a U.S. citizen before the individual reached age 18,
  
• the individual was physically present in the United States in the citizen parent’s legal custody pursuant to a lawful admission before the individual reached age 18,
  
• the individual never acquired U.S. citizenship before the enactment of this Act, and
  
• the individual was lawfully residing in the United States on the date of enactment of this Act.
  

An individual who meets such criteria, except for lawfully residing in the United States on the date of enactment of this Act, shall automatically become a U.S. citizen on the date on which the individual is physically present in the United States pursuant to a lawful admission.

Source: S-2275 - Adoptee Citizenship Act of 2015

So, about 2:30 this morning, @darkravn and I were sitting in our living room, when suddenly water started pouring out of the ceiling fan over our dining room table. 

Yeah, that was a nice jolt of adrenaline.

Long story short, a pipe burst and water poured into our dining room, kitchen, and living room for about 45 minutes before maintenance could finally get it turned off. As we speak, there’s someone vacuuming up the water and ripping out the carpet. There’s evident water damage along the walls and ceiling.

This puts us, obviously, in a bit of a tight spot. So if anyone might be able to kick us a few dollars to Paypal, it would be really appreciated. Any donations will be used to help out nerds who are feeling more than a little panicked about their immediate future. Signal boosts are also really appreciated. Thank you.

Ever since the Supreme Court ordered the nation’s voting authorities to get their act together in 2002 in the wake of Bush v Gore, tech companies have been flogging touchscreen voting machines to willing buyers across the country, while a cadre computer scientists trained in Ed Felten’s labs at Princeton have shown again and again and again and again that these machines are absolutely unfit for purpose, are trivial to hack, and endanger the US election system.

Felten has moved on to the White House, where he’s deputy CTO, while his grad students have fanned out across the country to take positions at some of America’s top universities, where they and their students continue to mercilessly attack the unsound computers that America has put its democracy inside of.

Ben Wofford’s comprehensive account of the war on shitty voting machines in Politico is by turns frightening and enraging, and even though the touchscreen voting era appears to finally be drawing to its inevitable close, the remaining machines in the field are, if anything, even more vulnerable to remote attacks, and, worryingly, many are clustered in hotly disputed districts in key battleground states for the 2016 presidential race.

It’s not for lack of trying to raise alarms. Felten’s team and proteges have gone to far as to meet mysterious whistleblowers in dark New York alleys to take receipt of smuggled-out voting machines to run tests on, and then produced some of the most mediagenic, easy-to-understand videos and articles detailing their findings that you could ask for.

Combine this indifference with North Korea’s attack on Sony, China’s attack on the Office of Personnel Management, and Russia’s (presumptive) attack on the DNC, and you’ve got a situation where it’s all-too-plausible that the coming election will be hacked, and where it’s certain that any irregularities will be blamed on hackers, domestic and foreign.

After all, Virgina took 13 years to ditch its wifi-connected Winvote machines, whose crypto key is now known to be “abcde,” and which runs a version of Windows that hasn’t been updated since 2005. Jeremy Epstein, the whistleblower who fought for the machines’ removal for all that time, says of the elections that were balloted on Winvote systems, “If these machines and elections weren’t hacked, it was only because no one tried.”

To make things worse, many of the same vendors who denied, threatened, and obfuscated when caught selling defective voting machines are now trying to sell online voting systems that will have every problem of the worst voting machines, times a thousand.

http://boingboing.net/2016/08/12/if-the-2016-election-is-hacked.html

So they added a new “digital adult content” drop-down item to select in your Paypal business options but when you choose it your account will immediately be closed down. Just letting everyone know so they don’t get tricked! Even though this is a selectable item IT IS STILL ILLEGAL AND AGAINST PAYPAL POLICY TO SELL “SEXUALLY ORIENTED MATERIALS OR SERVICES”

okay so i’m seeing a lot of reblogs on this saying it’s a hoax or “probably not true” or “just in case this might be true” so just to be clear, this IS TRUE, exactly as depicted by the twitter poster in OP’s link.

when you go to create a business account, after having you enter your email/password, name, business name, and contact info, it then asks you about what kind of business you are running. that’s when you get this:

as shown above, when you go to fill out your business category, “adult digital content” appears as a subcategory to “entertainment and media.” as far as i can tell, this is the only place it is listed.

while the legality of selling sexually-related services and media in the U.S. varies from state to state, PayPal’s official Acceptable Use Policy states:

“You may not use the PayPal service for activities that relate to transactions involving […] items that are considered obscene” and “certain sexually oriented materials or services.”

it’s entirely—and probably intentionally—unclear as to what items and services are considered “obscene” or otherwise against PayPal’s policy, but i can only assume that it’s entirely up to the whim of whoever reviews user accounts to determine whether something is grounds for shutting an account down.

on top of that, a quick Google search revealed one user who asked PayPal directly what their restrictions on “adult content” were, and their account was closed shortly after inquiring. so even asking PayPal to clarify their policy can potentially get your account closed.

in any case, this is real and literal entrapment. sex workers, NSFW illustrators/animators, and adult product retailers need to be aware and be careful!

Check our “paypal” tag for more instances of sex workers having accounts shut down by paypal.

As some of you guys know I’m going to be a poll worker on Tuesday for the California Primary. I just wanted to pass along some information that I’ve learned during the training process. This is information might be specific to my county, but I figure it’s a good general rule of thumb for the rest of California.

1. DO NOT wear any political paraphernalia when you go to the polls. It’s electioneering and not allowed within 100 feet of a polling place. You’ve made it all the way there so make sure you get to vote.
2. DO NOT take out your cell phone inside the polling place. If you take pictures of your ballot, it will not be counted. You’ve made it this far, don’t fuck it up now.
3. If you have a mail-in ballot, you can still fill it out and bring it to your polling place and turn it in there. If you don’t have the envelope they can provide one to you.
4. If you signed up to vote by mail but didn’t mail your ballot, you can vote at your polling place on Tuesday but you must bring in your mail-in ballot with you. If you don’t have it you can still vote, but you’ll be given a provisional ballot.
   
5. Voter registration cards are available at your polling place which means you can change your address or your party affiliation or whatever. Just fill the card out and give it to the clerk. They’ll turn it in for you. Easy peasy.
6. Polling places open at 7am and close at 8pm. If you are in line before 8pm you will be allowed to vote. DON’T GET OUT OF LINE.

Those are the highlights I can think of. Please also keep in mind that the mainstream media will be anointing Hillary Clinton at 5pm Pacific when the polls close in New Jersey regardless of the outcome of the voting there.  Whomever your are voting for, don’t let this dissuade you from voting. YOUR VOTE MATTERS. (If you’re a Sanders supporter, it’s you they’re trying to keep from voting. Don’t let them win. If you’re a Clinton supporter, your candidate is going to need to prove to the super delegates that she’s got momentum and has it in her to win the biggest state in the union.) In addition to the Presidential primary, there are oodles of down ballot primaries, appointments and ballot measures that deserve your attention.

If I’ve forgotten anything, please add it in.

Additionally, looking through the sample ballot and voter information pamphlet and would ask you to also keep in mind the following: No Party Preference voters can ask for the following ballots - Democrat, American Independent Party, Libertarian or a No Party Preference ballot. It’s super important to note that the NPP ballot does not include Presidential candidates. The sample ballot in my county pamphlet only includes US Senator, US Representative, State Senator, State Assembly and County Supervisors. Make sure you receive the ballot of your choosing. If your polling place as run out of appropriate ballots, wait until more arrive.

Remember you can vote today at your County Registrar of Voters office as well.

Happy voting!