ELSEWHERE

I want to be able to cast a negative vote in elections

If the candidates running for an office are Bernie, Also Bernie, and Hitler, I want to be able to just remove someone else's vote for Hitler instead of picking between the two Bernies

 
Also as an aside can candidates with functionally identical campaigns just like, rock-paper-scissors it out before the election and the loser just drops out, instead of leftists constantly splitting their votes between themselves

I am looking at you Chris Bennett and Heidi Hall

I think that's basically what primaries are supposed to be but the races are so crowded that it does not in fact work that way in practice

Also we live in an extremely annoying timeline where everyone is fed up with the status quo, so everyone has the exact same talking points -- cheaper groceries! cheaper gas! the climate! the war! donald trump!! -- which makes the 'these candidates are basically interchangeable, how am I supposed to choose which one to vote for' problem much much worse than it's been in any other year I've voted. And the stakes on splitting the vote between progressive candidates is so high when they're running against, you know, hitler

Running for Superintendent of Public Instruction are 9 candidates campaigning on 'fund the teachers', 'fund the schools', 'mental health', 'that AI thing is kind of concerning, huh?', and 1 candidate running on 'keep boys out of girl sports'

Like I don't really care who of the 9 wins, I just want to take a vote away from the 1

(tbh relieved it's just the one)

Though that's my point right, is that she's not splitting the vote. So I guess I do wish there were more of her? Except I just wish there were even less

Aaaand I have voted! That's nice to have on my plate, it's been taking up a lot of my brain the past few days. I didn't even make it through the entire list of candidates for governor, there's just so many of them and I knew who I was going to vote for before really checking just based on which of the frontrunners I'd most like to win. California is a big state, governor is a big race, voting for someone no one else has heard of is just throwing that vote away.

 
So that's most of what I've been doing, but I've also been doing some Japanese study. Haven't been super focused on it, but here and there, and also I've been watching a couple episodes of Japanese-dubbed Steven Universe every morning. I understand almost none of it, but someday!

I wanted something that I'm already pretty familiar with so I can follow what's going on without understanding the dialogue, but also not something that I'm not so familiar with that I don't need to follow what's happening. Unfortunately only the first four seasons (and some shorts) have been dubbed, season 5 and the movie just aired over there with subtitles, but four seasons is still a huge chunk of show (especially considering that season 1 is fifty-someodd episodes long).

Anyway! Been enjoying that. I've also been playing Chef Life again, I'm working on fully upgrading all my recipes. I have all my sous chefs' story quests done, so they're all fully upgraded and I don't need to actually do anything in the kitchen anymore and in fact they're all faster and more efficient than me so it would be a hindrance for me to try. But it's all good mindless video games while I watch youtubes

 
So my medi-cal renewal was due this month, I submitted it in April and it's been sitting at 'received' in the progress ticker on the website, assuring me that someone would review it "shortly". The deadline for it was, yesterday.

It's been stressing me out

 
Alright, it is late. I was up late voting and now I should be heading to bed. I'm trying to start getting up earlier but so far my circadians are not impressed

reading campaign websites has turned my brain into mush

I'm so jealous of New York.

Why can't we have that. Where's our Zohran Mamdani.

The guy who piloted a UBI program in Stockton is running for Lt. Governor, so there is that