onfocus

"Democrats fretted almost continuously that Biden wasn’t doing enough to enthuse voters, to dominate the conversation, to turn out the base. But in the end, he won in the highest-turnout election since perhaps 1900, mobilizing more voters than any candidate in history."

Joe Biden, President. Things are looking up.

"If there’s no way for the trailing candidate to catch up, no legal way, no mathematical way, then the race is decided, essentially,” Sally Buzbee, The A.P.’s executive editor, said in an interview. “And if there is any uncertainty, or if there are enough votes out to change the result, then we don’t call the race."

The AP has done this before.

Facebook said “most” issues have been fully addressed, and that it’s working with advertisers to handle their concerns. The company also stressed that no ads were paused or rejected by humans or based on partisan ideologies. “We have worked throughout this election to maintain a neutral playing field, and that remains true in the face of these problems,” Facebook said in a blog post. “We understand that time is of the essence at this stage of the campaign season.”

The idea that algorithms are neutral is very dangerous—it’s just not true because an algorithm is made up of potentially hundreds or thousands of human decisions. (Even just one key decision can tip scales.) Humans are biased by business concerns or blind spots even when they’re working hard not to be. And I think Facebook has never been neutral based on their actions.

Facebook is a private monopoly and they are a terrible de facto Federal Election Commission. Plus they charge Biden more for ads which isn’t legal in other media. Facebook made the choice to favor conservatives a long time ago and the results are hurting society.

"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.