Blogaround + Happy Mid-Autumn Festival!

A tree that has fallen down on a road because of the typhoon. Image source.

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival! 中秋节快乐！

Here in Shanghai, we just had a typhoon, so we couldn't really do much for the holiday. (Typhoon Bebinca. Chinese name is 贝碧嘉.) Sixth Tone has an article on that: Typhoon Bebinca Slams Shanghai, Strongest Storm Since 1949. I was surprised to read it was the most powerful typhoon since 1949. In the area where I live, we had very strong winds and heavy rain for most of the day yesterday. Definitely bad enough that no one should go outside. I saw some large tree branches that had blown off the trees. But no flooding or power outages. It felt like an average typhoon to me, not "the worst typhoon since 1949." I guess it was worse in other parts of Shanghai.

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If you are a US citizen living abroad, you need to use the FPCA (Federal Post Card Application) to register to vote. VoteFromAbroad.org walks you through how to do that. 

If you have registered, then Ballot Drop Day is September 21. Check your email, fill out your ballot, and send it in!

If you live in a state that requires you to mail in your ballot, US consulates are able to mail them for you. Here are the deadlines to bring your ballot to one of the US consulates in China so it gets mailed on time:

Beijing: Friday, September 27
Guangzhou: Friday, September 27
Shanghai: Wednesday, September 25
Shenyang: Friday, September 27
Wuhan: Friday, September 27

If you miss the deadline, and you live in a state that requires you to send your ballot by mail (some states allow email or fax) then you should mail it yourself.

VOTE VOTE VOTE!

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1. Study: You Should Watch this Video to the End (September 9) "So for Study 5, they gave a new group of students the ability to go on YouTube and pick any video they want and watch it for ten minutes without interruption. After another unrelated task, the students were allowed to skip around YouTube all they wanted for ten minutes. And yep, once again, the students reported being more bored in the switching condition."

2. Taylor Swift endorses Kamala Harris for president (September 11) Yessssss.

3. HRC and the Fight for Gender Justice. (September 10) A post from Crip Dyke about the Human Rights Campaign (HRC). Hey, anybody remember that trend 10-15 years ago when everybody was changing their Facebook profile picture to the yellow and blue equals sign that was the HRC logo? And then there was a second trend when people changed their Facebook profile picture to a red and pink equals sign because, I can't remember why? I think because people decided the yellow and blue one was problematic in some way?

That was right around the time I changed from opposing marriage equality to supporting it. I remember feeling like it was a bit odd that they called themselves the "Human Rights Campaign" but they were basically *only* about marriage equality for same-sex marriages. Seems like "human rights" should include way more things than that?

Anyway this is a good post from Crip Dyke, from a trans perspective, about what kinds of issues HRC prioritizes, and the strategies they use, and where that fits into the queer community overall.

4. School Lunch: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) (September 12) 26-minute video.

5. Ace in the Gyno Space (September 12) "The thing that none of these people said (because they couldn’t have, because they weren’t like me, because they couldn’t have known) was how being an asexual at the gynecologist would be."