fellowtraveler

On Monday, Joe Biden’s presidential campaign fund, “Biden for President” changed its name to “Harris for President,” after he stepped down and endorsed the Vice President, Kamala Harris, as the new Democratic candidate. While most in the Democratic establishment appear to be on board, the Trump campaign has filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commision (FEC) to try to block the Biden campaign from passing its $91.5 million to Harris. The issue here is whether this constitutes a campaign donation, in which case it would be a shockingly large donation. Most experts seem to believe that the transfer is kosher, since she was on the Biden campaign’s ticket. In the meantime however, the FEC’s website is confused.

If you visit the website’s top-level raising page, you may be surprised to see that the Democrats are dramatically outpacing the Republicans. There is precedent for this. According to the FEC, Democrats have out-raised Republicans in every presidential race since 2000. In 2020, Democrats out-raised Republicans more than 3 to 1, largely because Mike Bloomberg spent over a million of his own dollars to win American Samoa. Nevertheless, something is wrong with these numbers. Setting aside the recent high fundraising events that Trump has had (his conviction, a near assassination, and the Republican national convention), the Republicans had a primary earlier in the year. That means lots of fundraising for various candidates, and these numbers reflect totals for all candidates that ran in the Republican primary. Biden’s biggest challenger in the primaries was “Uncommitted”. Keep in mind, the donation surge that Harris received this week won’t be reported until the end of the month, so any boost from Biden leaving the race and endorsing Harris won’t be included. The Republican numbers should be, and in fact are, higher at this point in the race.

If you look at the table below, you can see the fundraising totals for each individual candidate (except Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who converted his principal campaign committee into a political action committee). The FEC seems to know that Harris is in the race, but not that Biden has dropped out. According to the table, both candidates lead Trump in fundraising, with Biden slightly ahead of Harris. If you dig deeper into the candidate pages for Biden and Harris, you’ll see that they both have “Harris for President'' listed under their committees (and Harris still has her 2020 committee listed, which also seems odd). This data only included contributions reported up until the end of June, so “Harris for President” didn’t exist when they were made. The FEC seems to have double-counted Biden’s war chest, including the nearly $300 million raised in Biden’s fundraising numbers as well as Harris’. I confirmed this on the “Harris for President” committee page: the page lists both Biden and Harris as authorizing candidates.

Any time you work with data, you have to watch out for double-counting: when you slice data in different ways, sometimes the same bit of data ends up in two. If you sum those buckets back up, you’ve counted it twice. For example, let’s say there are 12 dog owners and 6 cat owners in my apartment building. That means there are 18 pet owners in the building, right? Unless any of them own both a dog and a cat, in which case I have double-counted them. In this case, instead of a dog and a cat, we’re talking about almost $300 million. The FEC’s database has that money assigned to Biden, but also to Harris. Obviously the FEC hasn’t done this intentionally. Nobody types out these numbers on this page. They update automatically in response to new data that is entered: in this case, the renaming of the “Biden for President” committee to the “Harris for President” committee. In software, this is what’s known as an edge case, a rare circumstance that could cause unusual behavior in the code.

There are other minor issues on the FEC’s data display system. For example, Biden’s overall receipts are about $12 million higher than Harris’. Seems odd since, again, the underlying data for both of them should be identical. On closer inspection, only contributions made from the 2023-2024 cycle were reclassified as Harris contributions. The $12 million pf contributions made to Biden in 2020-2021 are not double-counted, and are still listed under “Biden for President”.

Another one: The number of total receipts for 2023-2024 listed for “Harris for President” is about “about 1,023,000”. If you include Harris’ 2020 campaign (still filtering for the 2023-2024 cycle), it jumps to “about 1,032,000.” But then if you remove “Harris for President” and only look at the 2020 campaign alone, of course there are no receipts. So there are 9,000 ghost receipts that exist only when you combine both of Kamala Harris’ disparate campaign contribution funds. You can see these ghosts by toggling the campaign fund on and off; a little green message will say “9,000 more results” or “9,000 fewer results.”

While I was trying to figure out where these ghost receipts were, I clicked into the details on a receipt listed for October 23rd, 2020. For some reason it wasn’t reported until the 2023-2024 cycle, which was why it ended up in this filter. This one random receipt for –$2,800 had a few details listed for the source: Nassau, Bahamas, Executive, Alameda Research. I thought, “You’ve got to be kidding me.” But sure enough, the record was linked right there: it was “wizkid”, Democratic mega-donor, and current inmate at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York, Sam Bankman-Fried. The “Biden for President” committee sent this money to the “Biden Victory Fund”, which logged it as a “Return of Contribution from Sam Bankman-Fried”. The Biden Victory Fund did return a $50,000 contribution made by Bankman-Fried in 2020, but it looks like they held onto the $2,800 contribution.

When I reached out to the FEC Press Office, they directed me toward the presidential fundraising map, which doesn’t have the double-counting issue, and promised to contact their IT department. As a former developer, I’m sympathetic. These kinds of bugs crop up all the time. You try to catch them early in testing, but stuff sometimes sneaks through. As a journalist, however, it’s concerning when the government puts out bad information, intentionally or not. After all, like the banner at the top of the page says, this is “an official website of the United States government.”

The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World by Vincent Bevins
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Much like Caroline Elkins' Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire, Bevins tracks the evolution and propagation of coercive techniques. While Elkins focused on the British empire, Bevins examines the anti-communist violence and intimidation used by right-wing despots to crush the burgeoning third world movement in the decades after the second world war. He also roots out the ways in which the CIA actively supported these mass murder campaigns, providing materiel, lists of names, and green-lighting military coups against left-leaning leaders like Sukarno in Indonesia and Allende in Chile.

Bevins background as a journalist comes through in the intimate personal narratives that he weaves through the global geopolitical events of book. He keeps the spotlight focused on individuals whose lives were decimated without thought by policy decisions in America and military regimes in the third world. Ultimately, Bevins makes the case that this consistent and intentional policy of brutal anti-communism was in no small part responsible for the current hegemonic dominance that America holds today, and the persistent poverty and oppression felt by many in the third world still.

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Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire by Caroline Elkins
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

In precise, well-researched detail, Elkins tracks the various technologies of coercion that the British colonial administrations honed and deployed in service of its empire, from the concentration camps during the Boer War, all the way to the “dilution technique” during the Mau Mau rebellion. She shows how administrators, police, and intelligence officers built their careers tweaking and improving these violent coercive techniques during repressive campaigns in South Africa, Ireland, India and Pakistan, Palestine, Kenya, and the many legal contortions that the British state went through to justify this “legalized lawlessness” in its pursuit of a noble “liberal imperialism”. Finally, she documents the British Operation Legacy, in which British officials, directed from the highest levels of government, destroyed thousands upon thousands of incriminating documents to prevent them from falling into the hands of their newly liberated colonies.

Despite this, she also tracks the mirroring technologies of resistance, in all their compromised glory: solidarity between the Irish and the Indian independence movements, assassinations and bombings by vying Arab and Jewish militant groups in Palestine, Black intellectuals from colonized territories exposing liberalism's own inherent contradictions, and the Mau Mau oath, which bound Kenyans together, on threat of death, in resistance.

I found the end note of the book to be powerful and timely:

Those holding the keys to power rarely end systemic discrimination, enforce civil rights, or ensure equal opportunities. When these gatekeepers do yield, they dole out reform measures haltingly to those perceived as still “not yet” ready to stand on their own, while deportations, crackdowns, and incarcerations continue to punish society's alleged pollutants who threaten the natural order of things. As history has borne out over and over, those who have lived the experiences of liberalism's “inhuman totality” must demand universal rights and unfettered inclusion, sometimes peacefully and other times forcefully. Even then, that totality's ability to rear its head again, reinvented under another banner of reform, is an enduring feature of liberal states, as are demands for democracy's ever-elusive promise pf universal dignity and equality.

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When I'm traveling in Japan, I get an immense amount of satisfaction in paying with exact change, or paying the correct one/ten's digit of the price so that I swap my smaller denomination yen coins for higher denominations. Here are some observations about cash in Japan.

• Higher coin / bill split – the Japanese Yen has ¥1, ¥5, ¥10, ¥50, ¥100, and ¥500 coins. That's roughly equivalent to a $5 coin, whereas in the US, our largest coin is the quarter (half dollars are a myth). That means that coins are more useful, especially for smaller purchases. I actively carry a coin purse when I'm traveling here.
• None of this .99 bullshit – Prices are usually to the whole ¥10 or whole ¥100 without any added tax, instead of $5.95 + tax. I don't know who came up with that trash, but they should be in prison, they ruined cash. Just tell us how much the thing costs.
• Automated registers and self-payment – Most places have you handle payment more than an employee. This comes in a couple of different forms. Fast food places and convenience stores (konbini) will have a screen that shows your total and receptacle for coins and bills facing you. You can choose to pay by cash or card and your change is dispensed to you. Sometimes the employees have the same thing but on their side. Most Subway kiosks accept cash. At many less formal restaurants, you actually choose your order from a vending machine, which dispenses a ticket that you hand to the employee. All of this helps to smooth out the interaction (unless you're a foreigner expecting them to do everything for you).
• Change trays – Everyone has a cute little tray that either party can use to pass coins back and forth. This makes them easier to count and transfer, etc.
• Vending machines – Vending machines are literally everywhere. There's even a soup broth vending machine near my house (there's a warning, just in English, not to drink). They also offer heated drinks, which is amazing. Some of them might take cards, but many don't, which is a great reason to carry cash.

I went to the zoo on February 22nd. It was a chilly overcast day and I walked from my apartment off the Dotonbori. First I decided to walk through Shinsekai (new world), a past-its-prime world expo style outdoor shopping district and entertainment area. It reminded me a bit of the Tel Aviv central bus station (scheduled to close in 2022, then delayed to 2026) or Singapore's Rochor center (demolished in 2017, rest in peace), although this area still actively receives tourists and visitors, although the area has a seediness to it now.

Nearby to the zoo is Tobita Shinchi, Osaka's historic red light district. It's still quite active. Heart-pounding, I walked through, trying to avoid eye contact with the old woman calling. Each storefront is set up the same way: a small open room, open to the street like a garage. There's a small raised floor that covers most of the room, the kind of architectural nudge that in Japan indicates where you remove your shoes. The decor is pink and cheap, like an AirBnb bordello. In the center, on a zaisu piled with cushions, sits a young woman, made-up, sometimes costumed, smiling and giggling at the men who walking by. Nearby her, an older woman loudly beckons the men over. Sometimes, the zaisu is empty and the old woman is on her phone.

In between Tobita Shinchi and the zoo is a old covered shopping area filled with dozens of tiny karaoke bars, where office workers can go and drunkenly sing old Japanese ballads with an young attractive bartender. There are beer vending machines in the alleys. I saw a drunken man trying to sweep up trash in an alley. I don't know if he was responsible for that space or just doing his part. Outside of the zoo, I found an old rundown movie / porno theater. It looked like someone hand-painted the movie posters, including one for a Finnish nazi-killing John Wick style action joint that I want to watch with my dad. After the zoo, I didn't return to see a movie, which I regret a bit now. It seems like the kind of place that could be consumed any day.

The Tennoji Zoo in Osaka was built in 1915, the third zoo in Japan. Entrance was ¥‎500, so actually accessible to regular people, but it showed in the facility's maintenance; there was a ramshackle quality about it, strongly evidenced by the hand-drawn cardboard information signs put up everywhere. Like the movie posters, they showed simultaneously a deep personal affection and a stark institutional neglect. I couldn't help but feel like the last time this place got a influx of money was in the 90s. Turns out I was probably right. Ten years after the 1980 World Conservation Strategy was released, the Tennoji Zoo began renovating exhibits to be more naturalistic. It seems like they got about halfway and ran out of funds.

Mouflon quiz: What are you feeding them this season? Pinecones? Acorns? Ginkgo nuts?

This is a hole-bear (badger). It's not a bear. O Japanese badger. X Malayan sun bear

I entered the zoo and took a clockwise path around the grounds. First up was the museum of invertebrates, fish, amphibians and reptiles. This was one of the first renovated exhibits and felt the most similar to zoos I had been to in the US. I've always love the reptiles most of all. I used to subscribe to Reptiles magazine, and when I was little, I wanted to become a herpetologist. A lot of the fauna here was southeast Asian and Australian, which was neat.

Best Godzilla cosplay I've ever seen

She was hiding near the top of the case, but I waited and got lucky

These guys were digging through the rocks for little worms. It was cute.

A snake-necked turtle, my favorite from the whole trip. Also one of my two best pics I think.

After the reptile house came the African Savanna, also renovated to be more open and naturalistic. They couldn't do anything about the weather however. I always wonder if that's a problem, but maybe they move them inside in the deep winter. The rhino exhibit has exceptional line of sight and honestly, almost nothing keeping people out, which I was a bit surprised about. I tried to get a picture with the Tsutenkaku Tower in the background, a metropolitan intrusion into this “naturalistic” environment. I wonder if the rhino can see the tower, or if it cares.

There was an outdoor hyena exhibit as well as an herbivore exhibit with an okapi and a giraffe. Did you know that giraffes long necks are likely not a result of natural selection? Actual observations of giraffes show that many spend more than half their time feeding horizontally (amen to that, am I right?) and frequently eat low trees and bushes. Some scientists now believe that it was sexual selection via male “necking” that caused them to develop as long as they did, and the trees thing was a convenient side effect. In other words, men would literally rather grow long necks and bash them together than go to therapy. Relatedly, after taking some nice pictures of a lioness pacing near the glass of her enclosure and leaving, I was summoned back by the most ungodly throaty hacking sound. It was the male lion just screeching. I didn't record the sound but I got some good pictures. The lionesses completely ignored him.

I saw a tanuki for the first time! They're called raccoon dogs in English and most famously, their pelts give you the ability to fly. After that, one of the highlights of any Asian zoo: the red pandas. Red panda's are so. fucking. cute. These girls had a whole jungle gym to play on and while I was taking pics, the zookeeper came around an hid snacks in these little tubes and the red pandas scampered after his fishing them out. It was awesome.

Some other assorted mammals.

My other best photo.

They had a nocturnal house, which was interesting. It was pretty hard to see anything, so no pictures. There were a couple of enclosures with massive bat polycules just writhing on the ceiling. It looked to me like one bat was hanging out, doing its thing, and literally dozens of others just latched on, which is also how human polycules work. Also, they had a kiwi. Dear reader, you need to understand something about kiwis. They are not the size of kiwis. They are like small dogs. If you told me a kiwi was a baby ostrich I would believe you. Apparently there was a minor controversy earlier in the year when a fellow kiwi (the human kind) reported that the enclosure wasn't suitable. By the time I got there, it was quite dark, so it seems like they've addressed the issue. I get why New Zealand would get upset about it though. It would be like having a bald eagle in an enclosure without a McDonald's.

Sorry for that.

As the zoo was getting ready to shut down, I visited the cold weather exhibits. There was a confused looking polar bear, some penguins (the only bird exhibit we could get anywhere near due to the bird flu apparently), and some sea lions. Ironically, the sea lion enclosure was also designed “naturalistically”, with Japanese approximation of the tourist trap that is fisherman's wharf in San Francisco, where I just moved from.

With that, the zoo was closing up. I wandered around the area for a while longer and then made my way back home. Zoos are a really nostalgic place for me. My mom used to take me pretty frequently in Pittsburgh. Every time we went, I'd get one plastic animal figure. They are sort of painted rubber I guess, a little flex but mostly stiff, and I'd take them in the bathtub with me. I never had a truck phase, or planes or trains, or cars. Actually, why are boys so into transportation? I just got really into animals. I'd get animal encyclopedias out of the library from school and read them on the bus home. At one point I even started printing out pictures from Encarta online and sorting them by their taxonomy into folders. I was a really cool kid. Anyway, I'm hanging onto them for when I have kids myself. No construction vehicles for my little ones.

Thanks for reading.

The woman behind the hotel counter looked up from the computer in front of her and raised her arms up in an X. Behind her arms, the plastic mask she wore blushed brightly. She then retrieved a stack of index cards from a cabinet and shuffled through them, selecting several, which she arranged on the counter in front of me.

TOMORROW – 10AM

I had checked into this hotel about 45 minutes ago. They had moved my bags up for me, but after spending a few minutes in the room, I felt strongly that I would be more comfortable in a different one.

That didn't seem to be in the cards.

The woman cocked her head slightly, waiting for my response. I reread the words in front of me several times, mutely, heart sinking. I nodded. She bobbed her head in response and gathered the cards up. With a flourish, she gestured to a generously stocked tray of complimentary toiletries. I pocketed a small floss dispenser wrapped in plastic.

I glanced at my phone. It was 6 in the evening. I was stuck with my room for another 14 hours. I patted my pockets. Shit. I had left my wallet up in the room. I walked past the counter to the elevators and hit the button. When the elevator door opened, the small spaced was filled with a family of masks, who regarded me silently. I stepped out of the way, and they filed into the lobby. I entered the elevator and hit the button for my floor.

At the door to my current room, the one I was trying desperately to get out of, I hesitated, thinking through what I needed to get. There was a small desk in the room. My wallet was probably under the attractions pamphlet I had ambitiously grabbed from the lobby. I slipped my key card out of my pocket. If I took long strides, it would be three strides to the desk, grab it, three strides out. The door shouldn't be closed yet.

I raised the key to the door lock. Click, green. I pushed the door open. The last rays of cold winter sunlight lit up the small room, colliding with the warm lighting in the hallway. Everything seemed calm in the room, though I thought I caught a movement at the edge of my vision, near the bed. I kept my gaze fixed on the desk, taking large quick strides. I pushed aside the pamphlet, grabbed front left pocket, turned on my heel and strode out. As I reached the door, I heard a chittering and a few hisses. I didn't look back. The door had closed faster than I expected, and I grabbed it and swung it open, slamming it into the door stop as I fled the room. Then I pulled the door shut behind me.

Heart still pounding, I listened at the door. I heard some soft thumps, another hiss, and then a thin, slow, almost gentle scratching at the door. My stomach heaved.

A hotel employee walked past and bowed his head, his mask betraying nothing of what he thought about this bizarre display. I slipped front left pocket away, straightened my coat out and headed to the elevator.

In the lobby, the father of the family that I had passed in the elevator was gesticulating wildly at the woman behind the counter. I could see his face reddened behind his mask, sweat leaking out and down his neck. He jabbed his finger intensely into his cupped palm. I could hear his heavy breath against the inside of his mask. The woman behind the counter held her arms out, palms uplifted, as if offering something, though her hands were empty. I walked past this pantomime, thought the sliding door to the street outside.

The hotel was a small boutique hotel tucked away where two alleys crossed. There was an outdoor space that seemed to be called a park directly across from it, though it appeared more like a multipurpose fitness space and only had a couple of trees. Groups of people walked past in their masks. A couple of bicycles weaved through the pedestrians. I wondered if the masks would make it hard to see while bicycling. Next to the sign for the park, a poster of a cartoon police officer had holographic eyes that shifted as I walked past. I went to the convenience store nearby and used coins to buy one caffeine patch and three sugar patches. I would probably regret the caffeine patch, but what's one more regret. I walked back to the park and sat down on the bench next to an old man with a nicotine patch on his thin forearm. His mask looked worn. The material was scuffed and frayed at the edge, and it had been repaired in a few spots. He gestured at me when I sat down. When I didn't understand, he tried a few more times and then gave up. I slapped on the caffeine patch and one of the sugar patches.

I pulled out my phone. It was 6:17. I skipped ahead to 7:03. The sun was setting and it was getting colder. I was only wearing a light coat so I rubbed my hands together to try to warm them up. I slapped another sugar patch and sent a text to Serena. She probably wasn't awake yet. I watched a live stream of the fires for a bit. I skipped to 8:24, when Serena texted me back, to see if I wanted to talk. I did. When I called she answered.

“Hey, how are you feeling?”

“Okay I guess,” I replied sullenly.

“I wish there was something I could do.”

“Yeah, it's okay, they said that they have another room for me tomorrow morning, so I just need to make it through the night.”

“Yeah, but still it sucks. I mean, you're definitely going to be fine. There's no way they could be in business if...you know...if that was in there. It wouldn't make any sense.”

“Yeah, I know, it's not logical, but I just can't get it out of my head you know?”

“Yeah, I know”

“I didn't bring the right clothes for this weather either.” I had intended to buy a coat once I was arrived here, but with the situation in my room, I hadn't had the bandwidth to go shopping.

“Of course you didn't,” she laughed. She started telling me something that had happened at her job. I pretended to listen, but I just kept playing that chittering hissing sound over and over in my head, thin claws scratching at the inside of my skull.

“I just –” I choked, “I just want to be with you, and be safe. I don't want to go back in there.”

“I know,” she said sympathetically.

We went back and forth like that for a bit longer. She hadn't heard the sounds it made. I knew she was right, and everything was fine, but still, I was the one that had to sleep in the fucking room. There was no getting around it. I promised to tell her when I had moved into the new room. As I hung up, I imagined that it was the last time we would ever speak. The vague idea of our future together crumbled into a short, bitter nightmare. I saw her looking down at me in a hospital bed, tears in her eyes. I imagined lying to her, telling her it would be alright. Telling her that it was okay to move on. All the while, hiding what it was like inside, the clawing in my head, digging into my brain, trying to rip its way out. The whole fantasy was pointless and tragic, and it evoked in me a primal and selfish bitterness.

For my last meal, I slapped the last sugar patch. The old man had left a while ago. I was freezing.

I headed back across the street into the hotel lobby. Smiling masks bobbed their heads in greeting. I imagined them finding my body. I took the elevator up to my floor. At the door, I paused, but my ideations had already exhausted me, and there was less energy for fear or hesitation.

I opened the door. It was dark now that the sun had set. I slotted the key card into the power slot. The room lights came on, coloring the white sheets cream. It was a small room, the bed blocked on three sides by a wall. I emptied my pockets onto the desk and changed into a pair of shorts. I used the toilet, brushed my teeth. While I brushed, I stared at the running water, trying to decide if I was afraid of it.

It was past 10, less than 12 hours left. I decided to read at the desk for a bit, procrastinating what I knew would come. Occasionally, I'd head a quiet dragging sound from the bed behind me, or catch a small movement out of the corner of my eye. I tried to ignore it, focusing on the book I had been reading for a few weeks now. It was on the legacy of violence of the British Empire against their colonial possessions, and I kept reading out of sheer inertia, pretending that I had a future in which to benefit from this knowledge and that I wasn't spending possibly my last night as a cogent sane living human trying to “be more woke”. I was moderately successful, at least for a time.

But finally, it came time to sleep. I got into the bed, turned off the lights, and lay down. I put my sleep mask on. I took long slow breaths. I actually felt a bit drowsy. Maybe it was going to be one of my rare good days.

That was when I heard the sound. Not a squeak, much louder. Can there be a single chitter? If so, that's what I heard, and at a volume not trying to disguise itself. It jolted me awake, heart pounding, alert. I shifted on the bed a bit and slid my sleep mask off my eyes. As my eyes adjusted, I thought I saw something small and hunched moving in the corner of the room. I sat up in bed and squinted to try to make it out. As I did so, my hand pressed deeper into the mattress, and there was a crunch.

There was a shrieking hiss as the bed dissolved into a pile of furry clawing bodies, furiously clawing to escape. A cacophonous chittering sound filled the room and I flailed for anything solid to pull myself out, swatting at them as they scrambled over me in a frenzy. I could feel their small hands, like a child's, pulling on the sheets, batting my hair, scratching my skin, and I slipped underneath, into the dark mass of fur and claws. I opened my mouth to scream and several small limbs immediately entered, causing me to choke and gag.

I reached out one last time, trying to find the light switch, but the weight of their bodies overpowered me, and my hand slipped back under.

I looked down at the index card that the woman had placed on the hotel counter in front of me.

I held my arms up in an X.

---

At the beginning of a trip to Japan, I started to get sick, and for some convoluted reasons, couldn't shake the idea that I was dying of rabies. I was not, I just had a cold. This story is inspired by those first few days in Tokyo.