onfocus

"In 2016, voters disliked both candidates, which is why so many were persuadable in late October. In 2020, voters dislike Trump, and actually like Biden..."

This article helped my election anxiety a little. But that 2016 pain is still real and people still need to show up and vote.

"But it seems those who are asymptomatic may not be entirely free of changes wrought by the virus. MIT researchers have now found that people who are asymptomatic may differ from healthy individuals in the way that they cough. These differences are not decipherable to the human ear. But it turns out that they can be picked up by artificial intelligence."

Whoa if true. This is some living in the future stuff.

"Which leads us to the most important — and maybe the hardest — thing of all to remember: Be patient. When the polls close on Nov. 3, voters will have already decided the election. We just have to wait it out while the process of uncovering who they’ve elected unfolds."

Nothing like the anxiety of a critical election to instill patience in the electorate. But yeah.

"But there are no results to ‘flip’ until all valid votes are counted. And nothing could be more ‘suspicio[us]’ or ‘improp[er]’ than refusing to tally votes once the clock strikes 12 on election night. To suggest otherwise, especially in these fractious times, is to disserve the electoral process."

The idea that we have election results on election day is a TV invention that the Supreme Court is now using in arguments. It’s going to be a long week and an even longer post election time.

"The same Constitution that says Republicans can confirm Barrett weeks before the election, that allows them to retroactively impose a new and novel partisan requirement (same-party control of the Senate) on judicial confirmations, also says Congress can add as many seats to the Supreme Court as it wishes. It says Congress can strip the Supreme Court of its jurisdiction to hear certain kinds of cases. It says the judiciary is as subject to “checks and balances” as any other institution in American government and that the people through their elected officials have the right to discipline a court that works against their will."

With any pretense of civility gone, maybe the majority can make real progress toward majority rule.

"That’s where the fight lies. In understanding that however systemic the suppression of truth and trust might feel, there are still more of you than there are of them. The effort to say you are nothing and deserve nothing isn’t actually erasure. It’s actually their fear showing. And that fear in turn suggests that you still have more power than you may know."

The cruelty is the point.

The U.S. leads the world with 8.5 million confirmed cases of Covid-19, and this week Dr. Jay Butler, deputy director for infectious diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, reported what he called a “distressing trend” in which coronavirus case numbers are “increasing in nearly 75 percent of the country.”

Covid-19 is still what everyone should be focused on right now. I’m tired of restrictions. I’m tired of thinking about it. But it’s still a deadly virus that we need to work harder to stop.

"If Republicans keep the White House and the Senate, many will conclude that Democrats lost because people did not vote. But if that happens, it’s likelier that Democrats will have lost because people who wanted to vote could not vote."

Great summary of voter suppression efforts across the country. By the way, we should get rid of the electoral college.

"The president’s aides appeared to be giving wealthy party donors an early warning of a potentially impactful contagion at a time when Mr. Trump was publicly insisting that the threat was nonexistent."

These are just the worst people.

"The new rules, an expansion of YouTube’s existing hate and harassment policies, will prohibit content that “threatens or harrasses someone by suggesting they are complicit in one of these harmful conspiracies, such as QAnon or Pizzagate,” the post read."

Never too late to do the right thing. I do wish services had consequences for spreading so much misinformation and harassment for years.

"During the readings on the last day, kids typed, “I liked that line” or “so suspenseful” or “wow, that was really good!” as speakers read their pieces out loud. If verbalized, those compliments would have been rude interruptions. But the chat allows students to talk respectfully while someone else has the floor, which in turn allows them to better express their appreciation of one another. "

A nice silver lining: remote school is opening up some new ways for students to participate and connect. [via Dan Hon’s Things That Have Caught My Attention]

"Though this adds some extra friction for those who simply want to Retweet, we hope it will encourage everyone to not only consider why they are amplifying a Tweet, but also increase the likelihood that people add their own thoughts, reactions and perspectives to the conversation."

This. But seriously, happy to see Twitter adding some friction to the system to slow misinformation. If friction helps the system during an election, why not all the time?

"Your vote is your most tangible connection to the idea of democratic government. It’s the only form of political power most Americans possess. It’s proof that government of, by, and for the people hasn’t yet perished from the Earth. Your vote is personal. For a president to throw it out would be an audacious undertaking."

Voting has become a partisan issue: Democrats want everyone to vote and Republicans want to limit access. Keep that in mind as you hear arguments about the futility of voting—that argument works in favor of one party. If there’s no difference between the parties for your life, think about friends and neighbors like Elaine Atwell. I thought this tweet was a heartfelt way to explain the difference.

"President Trump berated his own cabinet officers on Thursday for not prosecuting or implicating his political enemies, lashing out even as he announced that he hoped to return to the campaign trail on Saturday just nine days after he tested positive for the coronavirus."

It has been a super normal series of days that have been regular and downright hinged. In a functioning society this wouldn’t be happening. Please vote for a functioning society.

“We have to think about the QAnon networks as the rails upon which misinformation is driven,” said Joan Donovan, research director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School.

It’s never too late to do the right thing. Like Casey Newton, it does make me wonder why now?

"The staff found, after a 16-month investigation into competitive practices at Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google, that the four businesses enjoy monopoly power that needs to be reined in by Congress and enforcers."

Findings! This all sounds promising but I’m skeptical that we’ll see meaningful change. That monopoly power has been very useful to the government.

"Our results are based on analyzing over fifty-five thousand online media stories, five million tweets, and seventy-five thousand posts on public Facebook pages garnering millions of engagements.  They are consistent with our findings about the American political media ecosystem from 2015-2018, published in Network Propaganda, in which we found that Fox News and Donald Trump’s own campaign were far more influential in spreading false beliefs than Russian trolls or Facebook clickbait artists."

People believe the President and he’s a disinformation campaign.

"But there was no sweeping transformation in the way many of the president’s most devoted supporters view the virus — and no sense of urgency to alter their behavior to better protect themselves. The president’s many arguments about the coronavirus...seemed to inoculate many in the Trump camp against rethinking their approach to the virus."

This cult of personality and magical thinking will not change easily and the damage it causes is going to be with us for a long time.