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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.

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In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

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