Wednesday night.

You gotta give America one thing: they know how to produce great entertainment. Somewhere out there, someone (or multiple someone) has probably been up for 39 hours straight, tracking the election results. That someone is probably pretty manic by now, and still has a few hours to go. (For the record: I am not that someone.) It’s still too early to call, with a lot of absentee ballots, mailed ballots, etc. The lead between Trump and Biden keeps widening and contracting. Biden seems to be the likely winner, but anything can happen. It’s all up to Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and Pennsylvania now. It’s pretty funny that my old stomping ground, Reno, might decide the election.

It was pretty disturbing to see the footage of Trump’s supporters trying to break into the ballot-counting facility in Michigan, hitting the glass with their hands like so many zombies. Well, at least they’ve stopped pretending they believe in democracy, eh?

My landlords keep trying to engage me in political conversations, and I keep laughing that off, saying I’m a Canadian now and don’t really care. I’m still not entirely sure why they’re rooting for Trump – or care about the US election at all. Meh. I’m not really in the “older and wiser” category compared to my younger self, but I’ve learned enough not to get into pointless political arguments with those I live with.

I woke up and checked the news as soon as I woke up today and was disappointed to see there was no winner. Gonna try again tomorrow: if this mess finally ends, at least my social media feed will return to some sort of normalcy.

In covid news, Ontario’s premier Doug Ford (our own version of Trump) is in hot water after no one really bothered to read his 20-page powerpoint presentation, and everyone is equally mad at him. Under the new plan, there are five infection levels, and somehow, someway, that involves reopening businesses even as cases rise. (Nobody seems to understand why that includes karaoke bars, aka the riskiest potential clusters.) Restaurant owners are unhappy about the 9pm closing time and the yo-yo nature of closing/reopening. Epidemiologists are unhappy with the idea of reopening businesses even as cases rise. Everyone else is just unhappy in general. Heh. The guy tried to please everyone, and ended up pissing off them all instead. Just like the prisoner’s dilemma: instead of sticking to one strategy, he flip-flopped and got the worst of all possible outcomes.

In other, and far more disturbing, covid news: we may end up with covid-20. The virus has jumped from humans to rodents and back to humans, by way of minks. A dozen people got infected, and it looks like the potential covid-19 vaccines won’t help against this particular new strain, seeing as it downgrades the formation of ye olde antibodies. Denmark isn’t taking any chances and culling millions of minks. With luck, this will be just another bizarre development that goes nowhere. Unfortunately, luck is in short supply in 2020… Let’s just hope this isn’t our new normal, eh?