November 3, 2020

13 Ways to Pass the Time on Election Day

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As a wise Florida man (Tom Petty) once said, the waiting is the hardest part. Here are some activities to keep you busy until election results start to roll in.

  • Scroll through Twitter. A lot of people there have a lot of opinions, but no one actually knows anything. Getting your blood boiling is a nice way to pass the time.
  • Buy a sandwich, or better yet, make one yourself. It is, after all, National Sandwich Day. Vote in our Recharge sandwich poll about whether a hot dog is a sandwich.
  • Go grocery shopping. It’s prudent to have your pantry stocked in the event of civil unrest. Just kidding! But you’re going to want to have a bottle of vodka in your freezer no matter what. Or Kentucky bourbon—it’s more American.
  • Open a book. Stare at the page for a few minutes before turning on the TV.
  • Head for the mountains and live off the grid. Make no plans to return.
  • Engage in whatever petty fights you’ve been putting off. The cable company charged you twice, but you haven’t gotten around to having them fix it? Now’s the time to listen to that horrible music while you wait on hold.
  • What do people you went to high school with look like now? Check Facebook to find out.
  • Throw bread into an open body of water.
  • Might I interest you in Wikipedia?
  • Sit outside while you wait for Sun-In hair lightener to work its magic on your soon-to-be-golden locks. Try not to think about the absurdity that such a warm sunny day should fall on a Tuesday in November. Let the phrases “human-caused climate change” and “catastrophic environmental collapse” nestle themselves deep in your subconscious, to emerge only when a wildfire starts lapping at your front lawn.
  • Start drafting your submission for Shouts & Murmurs. You really have a shot this time.
  • Oh, yeah, maybe vote, if you haven’t already. Today would be a good day to do that.
  • Have Mother Jones’ 2020 election blog open in another tab; we’ll be feeding you all the updates you need to know.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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