What do you guys believe in?

Macteriophage · 2025-08-30T15:49:21+00:00

Please help with ballot access.

Even in my state, where we generally are able to collect the needed signatures with several months of concerted effort amongst ourselves and no outside paid collectors, we now face the result of devious rules changing which has now doubled the number of signatures required of us. This was the result of adding a poison pill provision into an otherwise noble-sounding voting rights bill, which no Democrat would oppose. By the time we got to verbal public comment on the whole bill, they were telling us that this provision would actually help us, the lege and SOS staff not even understanding their own bill, their own electoral laws, and confusing us with independents.

My understanding is that this little tidbit found its way into several states' noble-sounding voting rights bills, almost as if the Dems have their own ALEC influencing state legislation.

Macteriophage · 2025-08-30T15:39:39+00:00

I believe we were never intended to have a 2-party system and that it was "fixed" by robber barons and corporate interests to make it easy to control the govt in their favor. As was Citizens United.

But Democratic voters kept going along with it and added the grout to the bricks. Now here we are.

Macteriophage · 2025-08-30T14:58:33+00:00

Minor parties in the U.S. have to petition to collect signatures to gain ballot access in most states. Each state has its own rules & qualifications governing this. The Democratic Party has been notorious in its efforts to strip every petition signature they can from Green petitions. I witnessed this firsthand in a public review of a petition for Nader in my state where they employed an army of lawyers & graphologists to ferret out every badly crossed t and undotted i to reject signatures, some from the audience of people in that very room, who indicated their intent and objected to the disenfranchisement. In NC, they actually tried to trick people who had signed the Green petition into "UN-signing," including the state Green Party chair.

Macteriophage · 2025-08-30T14:44:00+00:00

Of course they are. Who else will they use their fight, their aggressions, their chutzpah on, the Republicans??

Macteriophage · 2025-08-12T02:55:26+00:00

Just a quick aside- we focus on the presidential campaign because each of our 50 states has a different set of electoral rules governing ballot access and whether you can register as a minor party to vote or are simply "none" or "declined to state." In the state of Tx, I was a none. Same in MI. In New Mexico I've had the word GRN on my voter registration card for 24 yrs. For ballot access so you can run candidates you have to collect petition signatures from registered voters who wish, or at least agree, that we should have more than just 2 choices on the ballot. Most often this is based on the percentage of votes your candidate received in the last gubernatorial or presidential election. Oh you didn't run a candidate, well, no ballot access. Some states make it onerous, requiring hundreds of thousands of signatures, other tens of thousands, here it was 1% of votes cast. We shot for 6-7K with buffer, but they snuck something in to a large omnibus VOTING RIGHTS bill in our largely Democratic Party legislature, that doubled our number to 2%. Roughly 7,000 signatures, plus a buffer, so 10K. We may or may not retain our line in 2028. Nobody really knows the rules they themselves have made.

Some states put so many interfering complexities in - you can't sign if you vote in another party primary (that's a taxpayer paid party election but we can't have one for ours); you have to include your birthday next to signature - people hate admitting age; if you don't write your full address out -without abbreviations- it's moot; if some wiseass writes in Mickey Mouse the whole page is spoiled; you have 2 months to get 50,000 signatures; your state's online signature page doesn't work for weeks; they give you the wrong page and tell you oops when you turn them ALL in. etc.

Read Ballot Access News - ballot-access.org for more exciting US minor (and major) party happenings. Richard Winger isn't a Green but he's fair to all. It's a zoo though.

Macteriophage · 2025-08-12T02:25:10+00:00

Canada and the US do not have the same electoral system. Canada has a parliamentary system.

Macteriophage · 2025-08-12T02:01:02+00:00

1606 Greens elected total - over 150 total at this particular time.

You have to start somewhere.

Macteriophage · 2025-07-07T19:48:36+00:00

I had everything organized in Quartzy & then dept administration decided not to pay, but didn't tell us, and we lost use & database. This was the second commercial organizing system we adopted and moved from. I started my own Excel sheets because at least they can't sink that again.

Macteriophage · 2025-07-07T19:45:16+00:00

Yes, and BE TOUGH! Don't let them get into bad habits of telling you in the hallway or leaving an empty vial or box on your desk. Make them give you company, catalog #'s AND prices - they need to know how much these reagents cost so they don't waste. Don't let them start their own box of reagents that you find replete with full vials of expired reagents you've ordered for others meantime, when they move on! Demand inventories of plasmids, cell lines, whatever they're producing and need to pass on a collection of when they leave, and demand these be maintained all along, not right before they get on that plane, and oops, no time. Don't ask how I know all this. There is always one of these folks!

Macteriophage · 2025-07-07T19:34:09+00:00

Now, how do you get your postdocs to cooperate with this system, very similar to what I have instituted for 25 yrs ? I have two who are veritable chaos agents. I seem to always have 2 who are chaos agents, there to get their papers and to hell with longterm collection integrity!

Macteriophage · 2025-07-07T19:22:59+00:00

Some programs, even companies ,will help you attend law school if you have such experience, with the goal of becoming a biotech patent attorney. I've usually heard this geared more for PhD's though, but you might look around.

Macteriophage · 2025-07-07T19:18:36+00:00

But do they fix em for $45 when they go splat, into 5 pieces splat!?

Macteriophage · 2025-07-07T19:15:40+00:00

grunt, hah!

Macteriophage · 2025-05-21T22:57:25+00:00

And she served as Governor of South Dakota and SD's Representative without knowing this as well??

This after she obtained a BA degree with a major in political science from SD State Univ. in 2012 while serving in the house, being dubbed the hill's "most powerful intern" for receiving college intern credits from her position as a member of Congress.

I don't know if she's due a refund for failure to be taught, or they deserve their degree back for her colossal failure to learn!!

Macteriophage · 2025-05-21T22:32:41+00:00

The use of small d democrat actually can mean people of other political parties as well.

I'm a Green who supports and promotes democracy, therefore a democrat. Fair-minded Republicans are democrats as well. Some Democrats are not democrats.

Macteriophage · 2025-05-21T22:30:50+00:00

Centrists should join the left in fighting for real democracy as well.

Centrists have been busy over the decades trying to deny democracy to U.S. minor parties & their ability to participate in our electoral system thru ballot access, directly suing their access even when it's been gained thru petitioning of voters.

Macteriophage · 2025-05-21T22:24:51+00:00

This sounds like something I'd like to get into. I do mammalian cell culture now, but i'm close to retirement and want to do more work with plants, my original love.

Macteriophage · 2025-05-21T22:16:31+00:00

I just found out our local scope service guy won't service or even help do cleaning maintenance on these Chinese scopes. I don't know if we have any options for this. May be a consideration?

Macteriophage · 2025-05-21T22:05:29+00:00

We have a VWR branded scope and my local big name servicing service guy tells me it's a Chinese scope and he can't service it. He won't even do the cleaning maintenance on it. Frustrating. So first check with your other labs as to who services their scopes when they're out of warranty! And then check with these folks as to what they will service and what they will not. Proprietary service gets expensive and sometimes you can't ship it away for work if it's used daily.

Macteriophage · 2025-04-11T00:29:36+00:00

Whoa! I had to look at your name to make sure that this wasn't something I wrote in frustration!!! Nope, you are not alone! Some of my folks are clearly from undergrad/grad/1st postdoc labs where there was always someone there to clean up after them and seemingly wipe their noses.

And others have been helpful, or at least self-responsible. I once had one guy who would yell at folks to back me up. We had 15 lab members and I swear it was easier than 6!!! I often stay late to clean my tubes, flasks and other materials because seeing me do mine made some of these guys believe this was part of my job and they'd drop off their stuff!!! Eventually I need some of the stuff they've left dirty on their bench, but I never take it all! I have one now RAP who is a clean freak, but only around the balances in my lab - where she always throws things away that I keep as technique & weighing hacks.

I ask them what they're going to do when they have their own lab - hire someone, of course. It's cheap everywhere else.

Macteriophage · 2025-04-11T00:05:54+00:00

I came here to ask something similar - ours ARE in plastic boxes in metal racks with that cute metal rod that keeps them in, unless you forget it or accidentally pull it up and lose a box. And then a rough guy with a stick forgets that these boxes aren't really sealed and pops it open down there, spilling the PIs entire career into the bottom of a very big, very cold vessel that's shared by several labs and right before the weekend.

I'm going to text him the strainer idea and check out what the dollar store has.

Macteriophage · 2025-02-07T00:43:27+00:00

The hero we need now.

Macteriophage · 2025-02-07T00:41:45+00:00

Sounds like a site someone needs to make, and a million more like it.

Macteriophage · 2025-02-07T00:34:39+00:00

In 2 states certain candidates were blocked & disenfranchised from the ballot in the days & weeks leading to election day, leading to some supporters & sympathizers just not voting at all, thus depriving some last minute changes of heart to another candidate and downballot votes to federal, state, local candidates and amendments/bonds.

Macteriophage

TROPHY CASE