I work for a company that had offices in Russia and has relocated many of those workers to Spain.

And if you look like you could be from the Middle East, so if you are Spanish, Italian, from the Balkans, Latin America or any other place where people aren’t pale as fuck, prepare to be insulted, threatened and sometimes violently attacked in the streets.

When I was 18, over 20 years ago, I spent 3 weeks in Southern Germany. As a white American it was the first time I experienced racism, though mild. I will never forget the look the family I was staying with gave me when I told them my last name was Italian. When the mother asked me, she was hopeful my last name was Spanish and visibly disappointed when I said Italian.

This message was brought to you by Brando. Water’s stupid.

I mean no shock that he would carry out a plan to kill people indiscriminately. What I wonder is if he could get the devices into their hands to carry out this attack, what else have they sold to Hezbollah?

Ruby Bridges is alive and well.

Corn syrup has wrecked ice cream for me. I can’t stand it and actively avoid buying ice cream with it.

I miss the old Bryer’s

I vaped for quite a while. Got a bit addicted to the tinkering and the juice hunting. It can be a fun hobby which probably makes it a bad way to quit if you’re anything like me.

I worked myself down on the nicotine levels until I was at zero.

Relapsed back to cigarettes after not having vaped for a few months due to stress.

Finally stopped cold turkey. Didn’t go back to vaping just decided it was time.

Things that ultimately helped:

• Having a reason to quit that I could remind myself of daily as an affirmation.
• My partner was also quitting, I needed her to stop and needed to be there to support her efforts.

If I was going to do it again, I’d probably look into Fum or something similar. Probably add some nicotine gum at the start to ease the chemical addiction.

Just because Harris endorsed it doesn’t make it a good idea.

It could actually be a criminal one but the speculation is that the burden of proof is much higher and this was the DA getting it on the books before the election. Nothing prevents them from bringing criminal charges after putting the evidence before a grand jury.

I’d be happy if they just deported him. I mean jail time and heavy fines would be the dream but I’ll take him having to leave the country. Isn’t that what they want us to do with foreigners that commit crimes anyway?

Edit: Reminded this is a civil case so no chance of jail or deportation. Bit of doesn’t hurt to have dreams.

Just to clarify because I had to dig a bit deeper here. The federal prosecutor who struck a deal with Epstein in 2008 was Acosta. Not Barr as I had assumed.

I do find it interesting though that William Barr was counsel at Kirkland & Ellis in 2009. This is the firm that represented Epstein in 2008.

A timeline of the Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell scandal

William Barr Is the Wrong Person to Lead the Jeffrey Epstein Investigation

Roo got jacked! Pooh still looks like he hits the honey too much.

My grandfather worked in a lab at a brewery. His job was to sample grain coming in. Rejected grain cars were sent to the cereal factories.

I hate it all. The hats, the flags, the yard signs, etc. But I also love them because I easily know the people I don’t want to be around and will never trust. The only thing more identifying is a badge.

And you get twice as many votes if you have kids. But only 1.6 times if any of your children have a parent that is an immigrant. And if both parents are immigrants your vote only counts as .6. If you have 5 white males you get 3x each.

You’re right it doesn’t die, but it is suffocated a bit in my experience. When it is not okay to be hateful, when people actually are not comfortable putting their hatred out there, it doesn’t spread as easily.

Unfortunately, Florida isn’t even considered a swing state anymore. The only way this becomes an issue is if somehow Harris wins the state and it’s all because of Miami-Dade cancelling out most of the rest of the state.

Harris winning Florida, 0 to slim chance. Miami-Dade being the reason, impossible.

And this lack of coherent, federally managed elections, also means some states just literally provide way too few places to vote.

We actually do have laws federally to protect voters from disenfranchisement. There are often lawsuits about polling locations, hours of voting, and number of drop boxes. One side is definitely always trying to make it harder to vote, specifically on contested areas.

This is a bit of a non-story.

Department of Justice already decided not to reassign the case.

Backed into a corner, the Justice Department finally took a stance on Cannon’s partiality on Oct. 21—at least in the context of the Routh prosecution. In a perfunctory, one-and-a-half-page filing, the government opposed Routh’s motion, stating that it did “not present either facts or case law requiring recusal on this record in light of the controlling standard.”

Given that the Justice Department has already ruled on this, there was no way that Cannon was going to say “You might be right, I can’t be impartial.” Has she done that it would have also guaranteed her removal from the documents case when it is eventually reopened. Though I suspect she’ll be removed from that anyway.

Is it wrong to call a Nazi a Nazi? No and it should be done regularly.

For 16+ years I’ve been watching the divisions grow. It started with the covert racism of the tea party and birtherism and in 2015 an orange turd slid down an escalator and brought it all out into the open, making it ok to identify people as rapists and murders based on where they are from and the color of their skin.

There has always existed “others” to those who need to have someone to blame or someone to punch down and there always will be. But I liked it better when they weren’t so empowered. “Democracy dies in darkness” but so does hate.

It used to be that not knowing how to spell potato or not wanting to eat broccoli was enough to damage a political reputation. To say that you don’t like the man who divides and insults, funnels tax money to his pockets, attacks women verbally and physically, and threatens the security of our nation and our allies’; but still vote for him is insanity. At this point I can only conclude that his supporters embrace the racism, are willfully ignorant, view him as a useful idiot, or a bit of it all.

End rant. I didn’t want to actually add to the divide, but finding common ground is nearly impossible.

I’m happy to vote for Harris. A person who supports all Americans regardless of how they identify in any way. I am excited to have someone who will fight for equality. Someone who understands that income and wealth disparity is failing lower and middle classes.

Harris is not perfect, but perfect for me won’t be for someone else, so searching for perfect is a losing hand.