Friday night. One thing about this pandemic: the longer it goes on, the more the “hot singles in your area!” cliche will come true.

The election circus is still ongoing – for the fourth night in a row now. It’s gotten past the point of ridiculousness, and all the way into the land of dadaist absurdity. Nevada won’t update their totals until well into the weekend, and even that’s not guaranteed. The last remaining ballots are those sent by mail, and they’re heavily pro-Biden to the point where there are no remaining victory options for Trump. And yet none of the news networks are declaring the results: they’re slowly and painfully dragging this out instead.

Either they’re just trying to get those sweet, sweet advertising dollars by stretching the process as long as possible (yay ratings!), or they’re genuinely concerned that crazy Trump supporters (and/or Q-Anon cultists) will literally declare war on them. Earlier, the FBI detained two armed men who allegedly plotted to attack the vote-counting location in Pennsylvania. If not for the anonymous tip those feds had gotten… Here is hoping that dumpster-fire of an election will end sooner rather than later.

In covid news, the White House chief of staff Mark Meadows has covid. Online sleuths have already found a few pictures of him not wearing a mask at the recent White House functions. It’ll be a little ironic if the administration spawns yet another covid cluster as their term ends.

In less funny covid news, the University of Edinburgh analyzed data from 131 countries and concluded that reopening schools increases the R transmission rate by 24%. That proves that children are, in fact, human and capable of getting and spreading covid. Early on in the pandemic, folks were surprised that kids rarely had any serious cases of covid. At some point, some must have assumed kids were completely immune… The arguments for reopening schools have consisted almost entirely of emotional appeals, at least from what I’ve seen. Yes, it’d be less than perfect to keep them away from their peers, but if that’s one of the best ways to hit the brakes on the pandemic, wouldn’t that be acceptable, at least for a little while?.. Here is hoping the study will influence the public policy, eh.

Stay safe and sane out there, folks.