So Universal Pictures may have just intentionally over-pruned all of the city owned trees in front of their LA corporate office in an effort to fuck with the WGA/SAG-AFTRA picketers during what is predicted to be the hottest week of the year so far:
And the LA City Controller is looking into it:
Once again it looks like it's time for:
p1 p2 p3
fanart for part 7, the island
malevolent: the flame had a slight greenish hue to it
me: everything was bathed in bright green light, got it
So, Gabriel Attal somehow took a clear-ish position against the far-right. Truly, we live in an age of miracles.
The Prime Minister said that not one vote should go to the RN. In circonscriptions where their candidate is third, they should quit in favor of "another candidate who, like us, defends the values of the Republic".
This is, overall, good news. The government has managed to talk about the far-right without making any references to what they call the far-left. What worries me is that they haven't clearly said that any NFP candidate is a better choice than an RN candidate.
Candidates have until Tuesday to confirm their candidacy. I truly hope that everyone will keep it together for a week, eat crows and desist when necessary, and that on Sunday we will achieve the best result possible, which is mediocre.
Mediocre is better than far-right. Many can survive mediocre who couldn't survive far-right. Final verdict is next Sunday, and until then, everyone, good luck and goodnight.
So while we wait to see how low we've slid on this slippery slope, I thought I'd give a primer on how legislative elections work in France.
The first thing to know is that it's more like 577 local elections. In order to be elected, a candidate has to win in the circonscription in which they were campaigning.
The second thing to know is that in order to win on the first round of the election, a candidate must have at least 50% of the votes AND 25% of those registered. This means that if, as has happened in La Martinique, a candidate has 63% of the votes but the turn-out was low (estimated around 25%, which is low but higher than it was in the last election), they still get a second round.
Now, for the second round. Are qualified 1. The candidate who had the most votes and 2. Any candidate that had 12,5% of those registered to vote. Once again, this means that the turn-out is a factor in who gets to participate in the second round. It also means that it is possible for a second round to have a "triangulaire", that is to say 3 candidates in the second round (technically, it means that it's possible to have four candidates).
At time of writing, it is estimated that between 65 and 85 representatives have been elected on the first round, and that there will be between 285 and 315 triangulaires (based on the data given by Le Monde, which is based on Ipsos data). Out of 577 seats. This means that in a lot of circonscriptions, there will most probably be one RN candidate, one NFP candidate and one candidate from the presidential party.
On the left, several political leaders have already announced that if their candidates arrived third and a RN candidate was qualified for the second round, they would give up the election and encourage people to vote for whoever else was qualified.
And now the big question: will the presidential party do the same? Gabriel Attal, the Prime Minister, is expected to talk to the press tonight. I, personally, will be drinking and obsessively refreshing the news page.
This meme is inescapable on French insta so I'm posting it here for all to enjoy
it is so funny to me how i started learning english on my own age 10 because the manga i was reading was turning so so so bad i went to fan content to cope with how shit it was. and 15 years later this pays off as my boss tells me i'm an essential asset in the team as the only fluent english-speaker.
“‘To be sure. I have here another complaint of over-enthusiastic clamping. I’m sure you know to what I refer.’ ‘It was causing serious traffic congestion, sah!’ ‘Quite so. It is well known for it. But it is, in fact, the opera house.’”
— Terry Pratchett, The Fifth Elephant
But those are the funniest options!
I remember when I first saw the Coming Out Video. I spent most of it wondering if I had lost the ability to recognize faces.
The next episode of Philosophy Tube is gonna be very special I'm travelling back in time to chat to my past self, and it does not go well... More pics on my Patreon now!
I also want to say a special thanks to you all on this one. Today we cross-shot a dramatic scene with three cameras, a dedicated sound engineer, a hair and makeup artist, a professional actor, plus me. We had a full hour lunch break and everyone got paid a pro rate. I'm proud of the production quality we're able to achieve on Philosophy Tube and, I hope, of the way the crew get tret - that's super important to me. When patrons and Nebula subscribers trust me with their money it's important to me that it goes on the screen.
So thank you. This kind of thing just would not be possible without audience support - Patreon subscribers and Nebula subscribers - because advertising doesn't pay for quality like this.