May 25, 2020

Don’t Pretend You Didn’t Know That Today Is Geek Pride Day

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Today is a twofer: Memorial Day and Geek Pride Day. Geek day originated 14 years ago when Spanish blogger Germán Martínez wanted to celebrate geekness and pull together a community, so he chose the anniversary of the first Star Wars release as the date. About 300 geeks turned out in Madrid that day to play human Pac-Man, and a geeks’ bill of rights was written. The manifesto included “the right not to like football or any other sport” and “the right not to be ‘in style.’”

If you need a boost today, watch a cult classic; dust off an arcane video game; play too many Chess.com games; overuse semicolons; or help me solve a grammatical puzzle: Is “global pandemic” redundant? “Pan-” means all. The Associated Press says it’s redundant, but Merriam-Webster says it’s not, defining pandemic as “occurring over a wide geographic area,” not necessarily the world, so “global” enlarges it. Weigh in at recharge@motherjones.com. Bonus points if you know what a pleonasm is.

Recharge returns tomorrow with surprisingly good news for the week ahead.

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

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And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

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