a weblog of whereabouts & interests, since 2010
Biden wins Michigan. (Arizona is imminent .. was in fact already called for Biden by none other than Fox News, last night). Nevada is at 86% with Biden holding a slim lead.
Update 9.00 pm: No further update for the day from the NYT. Associated Press (usually very cautious) have awarded Arizona to Biden (253 goes to 264).
Oh! New single-day record for Covid-19 cases in the US: more than 100,000.
Wisconsin is now projected to go to Biden. Biden holds leads in Michigan (16 electoral votes), Arizona (11) and Nevada (6). 237+16+11+6 = 270 for the win. Pennsylvania may be lost to Biden (the hope is that the mail-in vote will catch him up).
Amazingly, the once-in-a-century pandemic that brought on an economic collapse, made very little difference. The polls of Biden +8% missed the mark by a very wide margin (more like Biden +2%), and Republicans stuck to their party.
When all of the votes are counted Joseph R Biden of Delaware will be elected the 46th President of the United States.
– Steve Schmidt from the Lincoln Project @SteveSchmidtSES on Twitter
Good enough for me. I’m going to try to get some sleep. (I see Trump has already falsely proclaimed that he had won, as he had said he would do).
A sign of confidence from the Biden world: Rufus Gifford, one of his deputy campaign managers, tweeted shortly before midnight East coast time ‘We’re going to win’. – Thomas Kaplan reporting for the NY Times
It’s still early, but I already feel like Evinrude from The Rescuers.
In The Matrix (1999 film), the main character Neo is offered the choice between a red pill and a blue pill by rebel leader Morpheus.
The red pill represents an uncertain future — it would free him from the enslaving control of the machine-generated dream world and allow him to escape into the real world, but living the ‘truth of reality’ is harsher, and more difficult.
On the other hand, the blue pill represents a beautiful prison — it would lead him back to ignorance, living in confined comfort, without want or fear, within the simulated reality of the Matrix.
As described by Morpheus: ‘You take the blue pill … the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill … you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.’ (Neo chooses the red pill and joins the rebellion).
– [From Wikipedia].
The voting ends tomorrow, and then the counting starts.
My fervent hope is that the early results be reassuring — and not terrifying.
Georgia, Florida and North Carolina sit on the East coast, and have experience will mail-in voting. They will also provide breakdowns of in-person and mail-in voting.
If Biden wins even just one of them, it will confirm his status as solid favorite to win.
If Trump wins all three, both candidates still have a path to victory.
Kyk of jy vir my die son kan vang
Daar’s ‘n kamer in die huis waar ons die son kan hang
Dis donker by die venster in die middel van die dag
Onthou jy nog hoe helder die kamer kon lag
(See if you can catch me the sun
There’s a room in the house where it can be hung
It’s dark by the window in the middle of the day
Remember how brightly the room would play)
– from Sonvanger (‘Sun Catcher’), written in 2002 by South African singer-songwriter Valiant Swart, with my rough translation added.
Sun catcher refers to a pendant that reflects and spreads sunlight around a room, in the form of rainbows and flecks of light.
We’re back on standard time here in the United States. We turned back our clocks by one hour last night.
Some 32 states have now engaged in legislation to establish Daylight Saving Time (DST) as the official time year-round. For this to become a reality though, Congress has to approve an amendment to the Uniform Time Act of 1966.
Friday saw a single-day record of 99,155 new cases, and the crossing of the 9 million mark, for cases nationwide.
No matter.
Trump – from the Republican Party of Death – is still holding super-spreader rallies, in the dying days of his dead campaign.
Berlin Brandenburg Willy Brandt airport (code: BER) is finally, at last, open for business. Its opening this Saturday is 9 years late. Numerous scandals had devoured huge sums of money and ruined many a reputation.
I am eager to go and check it out, and I will definitely put the airport BER on my list of destinations to fly into, once this pandemic has subsided.
[Photo: Markus Mainka/imago images]
It’s National Cat Day. Yes, I know: these are not your garden variety house cats!
BeArizona, a popular wildlife park near the Grand Canyon, adopted these two jaguars in October 2018.
Nacho is the black one (melanistic) and Libre is the spotted one (rosette). They are brothers and will turn six years old on Tuesday, Nov. 3. Fancy that, the same day the presidency of the United States will be clawed back from The Orange Imposter.
70 million voters have cast their vote. Voting ends in 6 days.
There is no question that Biden is still in a good position.
At the national level it looks like it will be Trump 43%* | Other 3% | Biden 54%.
* Says Christopher C. Williams @Chriswilliams5C on Twitter: We ALL should step back & reflect that 40% of our fellow AMERICANS are “freely’ voting again for a wanna-be autocratic grifter. Who would care less if they all die.
Oh, look! A dromedary had landed in my Amazon order of last week (for light bulbs, and a hub ethernet switch).
OK, I confess: I picked the camel and added it to my order. I needed to brighten up the shipment’s mundane content.
Trump installed his third Supreme Court justice on the bench today, with the help of Moscow Mitch and his conniving Senate Republicans.
The American people, who have preferred the Democratic nominee for president in six of the last seven presidential elections, are now subordinate to a solid 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court.
Today, the U.S. set a new record for new cases averaged over a 7-day period: 68,954.
The previous high was 66,844, set on July 23.
– The COVID Tracking Project @COVID19Tracking on Twitter
I again picked up my groceries that I had ordered online, yesterday.
I forgot to review the substitutes that that the in-store picker had made, beforehand. (They pick a ‘similar’ item if they had ran out of the exact one that you had ordered).
Well: the Marmite that I had ordered was replaced with dry yeast.
Yikes. No! Cannot do that. They are absolutely not equivalent! I told the store this on the feedback form afterwards (without yelling at them).
It’s time to get out the woolen hats and scarves here in Western Washington. It was 48 °F (9 °C) as I headed out the door, while there was still a little gray daylight left.
I missed the final presidential debate (Lucky me. I was playing tennis in the cold. We lucked out with dry courts on Tuesday, and again today).
Here is the Washington Post’s takeaways of the debate:
1. Trump offers no course correction on coronavirus.
2. Biden sharpens his coronavirus closing argument.
“Two-hundred twenty thousand Americans dead,” Biden began. “If you hear nothing else I say tonight, hear this: Anyone who is responsible, for not taking control — in fact, saying I take no responsibility initially — anyone that is responsible for that many deaths should not remain as president of the United States of America.”
3. Trump tries to make an issue of Hunter Biden, in fits and starts (unsubstantiated claims of corruption).
4. Biden’s dicey* energy comments ..
Trump then pressed Biden on whether he would “close down the oil industry,” to which Biden responded, “I would transition from the oil industry, yes … because the oil industry pollutes significantly.” Biden added that this should be part of the process of transitioning to renewable energy.
*Says Ezra Klein on Twitter: ‘It is amazing, in the year 2020, that anyone would treat a presidential candidate saying we need to transition away from oil as surprising or scandalous. The reckless, scandalous position — ruinous to both lives and economies — is denying the need to decarbonize’.
5. It was a better debate than the first one.
Fact checker Daniel Dale on Twitter: ‘From a lying perspective, Trump is even worse tonight than in the first debate’.
CNN Poll: Biden wins final presidential debate, 53% to 39%. (I guess 8% said it’s even or could not say who won).
The Guardian newspaper: Biden fends off flailing Trump but most voters have already decided. (And 47 million have already voted).
You know you’re old when you didn’t even know about the existence of ‘Among Us’, a massively popular online game on Twitch.
(Twitch is a platform for streaming online games to viewers that follow the players. The players can talk live, but viewers usually participate via text chat. Amazon owns it; bought it in 2014).
In the game Among Us, up to 10 players work together to complete tasks located around a map or a series of rooms. One player is secretly designated as an Imposter. When a body is found or an emergency meeting is called, the players all must vote for who they think the Imposter might be.
Anyway: on Monday, progressive politician with star power, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (elected to represent New York’s 14th congressional district in Congress at 29 yrs old), also known by her initials AOC, tweeted that she will participate in a game of Among Us.
Even before the game started, some 300,000 viewers were signed on, and later on the count reached 430,000, making it one of the most popular streams ever.
Why would AOC play in an online game? That’s where the young people are, and she told them how important it is to vote, and how to check how voting works in their State. (I suspect it is a little late to register, if you have not yet done so, though).
Here’s a little collection of fall leaves.
I put them in a bowl of water, and then I applied a digital filter to the pictures to simplify the colors.
My ballot has been counted.
The man they call ‘President’ (of the United States) attacked Dr. Fauci today, and called Joe Biden a criminal – and all journalists criminals, as well.
Those are not good arguments to make, with 15 days to go, and given that you are the criminal and the liar!
The sun did not come out today, but the soft rain had cleared up by the afternoon so that I could go for a walk.
The high was 60 °F/ 15 °C.
