Friday Cat Blogging – 6 May 2016

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Yesterday was a tough day: my computer went nuts and wouldn’t let me get any work done. The symptoms were bizarre: I couldn’t open any menus. They’d just flash on the screen and disappear. I couldn’t open apps. I couldn’t close apps. I could highlight text, but I couldn’t copy or paste it. I couldn’t even open the Start menu to reboot the machine. What the hell is going on with Windows 10?

Perhaps you can already figure out how this story ends? It turns out that Windows is fine. I’m sorry for doubting you, Microsoft. The bug turned out to be neither software nor firmware, but catware. Hilbert had his paw hanging out of the pod and was pressing the Escape key. When I removed his paw, everything worked fine again.

Really, the things we cat owners staffers put up with is astounding.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

payment methods

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