Election Day is finally here. (*gulp*)

Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, after replacing a Biden campaign killed by an abysmal June debate, has run a historic sprint to the finish, promising (with Coach Tim Walz) “A New Way Forward” focused on reproductive rights, middle class economics, and protecting American democracy. Former President Donald Trump, saddled with myriad felonies, a historically unpopular running mate, and a platform that ranges from fascistic to incoherent, leads a darkly authoritarian counterculture that tried once to subvert the popular will and aims to do so again. Dozens of key House and Senate and ballot races hang in the balance, and the outcome has titanic implications for human rights, climate change, the international order, and the future of liberal democracy around the world. But despite the stark contrast, a lingering economic malaise (and suspiciously close polling) make this look like the closest contest in modern history. So let’s give it a push in the right direction, yeah?

Voting resources: Check your registration - Find your polling place - Make your plan - States with same-day registration - See what’s on your ballot - USA.gov voting guide

Volunteer to get out the vote: Knock on doors - Phonebank - Textbank - Carpool - Neighbor2Neighbor - Help cure ballots

Follow the returns: Poll closing times - DecisionDeskHQ results - 538 benchmarks - Live coverage - Politico Liveblog - Preparing for post-election subversion - Timeline through Inauguration Day

The 2024 presidential race went from deja vu to unprecedented overnight More bits and bobs: Harris on SNL - Rogan endorses Trump - Lebron James, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Harrison Ford endorse Harris - The Onion examines a key swing voter - Dixville Notch is… a tie - over 78 million votes have been cast thus far In Texas: A pregnant teenager died after trying to get care in three visits to Texas emergency rooms Exactly how Trump could ban abortion nationwide John Oliver’s emotional final plea, highlighting Palestinian-American Georgia state rep. Ruwa Romman Harris vows at Michigan rally to ‘do everything in my power to end the war in Gaza’ RFK Jr. wants federal health data so he can show vaccines are unsafe, Trump transition co-chair says Five ways a Trump presidency would be disastrous for the climate Could Dan Osborn, an independent candidate from Nebraska, upend the U.S. Senate race? What Putin really wants from the US election

Closing arguments: Kamala Harris - Tim Walz - Barack Obama - Michelle Obama

H/T: Metafilter

Patrick Rhone –

Thought for today: What do I want future generations to learn in their high school US History class?

What we do tomorrow will determine that.

Half a dozen exceptional One Minute Films. Also, from Reddit, half a dozen exceptional Five Minute films. (five minutes or less, that is). Seven minute limit. Finally, ten good shorts under ten minutes.

Looking for more shorts: Four dozen outstanding short films of varying duration.

H/T: Metafilter

Will Leitch, writing for New York Magazine, thinks the Yankees have blown their chance at a WS win.

For Yankees fans, one of the more charming story lines from this World Series was the emergence of a photo of current shortstop Anthony Volpe as an 8-year-old, taken in the parade after the Yankees won their last World Series in 2009. Little Anthony is very cute, and he looks extremely happy. And the tale of the boy who grew up cheering for Derek Jeter and the Yankees now playing his hero’s old position, and trying to win his own World Series, is irresistible. What baseball-loving kid hasn’t imagined doing the same thing?

But by the end of the series, which wrapped up Thursday night with a wild Dodgers 7-6 game-five victory, the photo was just another reminder of how long it has been since the Yankees last captured a championship. That kid is now an adult; the Dodgers now have what the Yankees once did; you and everyone you know and love have gotten so, so old. The joy of the Yankees reaching their first Fall Classic in 15 years lasted exactly six days. The perpetual Yankees question remains: Now what?

What’s most frustrating for Yankees fans is that they really should be up 3-2 on the Dodgers right now and heading back to Los Angeles. They were an out away from winning game one when manager Aaron Boone inexplicably brought in Nestor Cortes, who hadn’t pitched in a month, in the bottom of the tenth. He promptly and predictably gave up a walk-off three-run homer to Freddie Freeman.

That was brutal, but game five’s mistakes were worse. The Yankees jumped out to a 5-0 lead, launching three homers off clearly depleted Dodgers pitcher Jack Flaherty, including a two-run shot from Aaron Judge — who looked to finally be rounding himself into regular-season shape. Yankee Stadium was roaring, Gerrit Cole was cruising (throwing a no-hitter, actually), and it looked like a game six was inevitable. But the postseason has a way of revealing those nagging flaws you tried to pretend your team didn’t have, and the biggest issue the Yankees have had all year — their inherent sloppiness — tore their season apart. Judge dropped an easy fly ball in center field. Volpe made a throwing error to third base. And worst of all, with the Yankees needing just one out to escape the inning, Cole didn’t cover first base on a ground ball, allowing Mookie Betts to reach and Freeman and Teoscar Hernandez base hits that would tie the game. By the time the Dodgers took the lead for good in the eighth, no one in Yankee Stadium was surprised. The Yankees were frequently excellent this season. But they never really played like one of those sharp Yankees teams that won all those titles decades ago. You could absolutely see this coming.

I’m glad I’m not a Yankees fan, but being a Cardinals fan isn’t much better.

Rebecca Traister, writer-at-large for New York Magazine and the Cut, had a story about one of the best advocates Kamala Harris has on her side: Michelle Obama.

On the last Saturday of October, Michelle Obama appeared in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and gave one of the most remarkable political speeches in memory. It was expansive and nuanced, yet conveyed the most straightforward message imaginable, applicable not just to the presidential candidate she was supporting, but to the millions of people who will be voting in the 2024 election:

“I am asking you all, from the core of my being, to take our lives seriously,” she implored. “Please, please do not hand our fates over to the likes of Trump, who knows nothing about us, who has shown deep contempt for us. A vote for him is a vote against us. Against our health, against our worth.” This is a question, she said, “about our value as women in this world.”

Her speech, which you can view in its entirety, was one of the best appeals I’ve ever heard. Traister called it:

… the more vivid, deeply felt, blood-and-guts vision of what this election is about. At its heart was the simplest and most heartbreaking of contentions — that women are people.

The fact that one side does not consider women as individuals and thinks of them more like how they are viewed in The Handmaid’s Tale is shockingly atrocious.

And should be immediately disqualifying.

The fact that Michelle Obama still must go up and tell an audience that women are people is sad.

I want this election to be over so bad.

David Roth, writing for Defector, reflects on the Dodgers winning the World Series. I’m such a fan of Roth’s writing. Incredibly jealous. So good.

The team that finished off a five-game World Series victory against the Yankees on Wednesday night with an admirably ugly, brutal, and retrospectively commanding 7-6 win was not remotely the most dominant of the Dodgers teams that couldn’t manage that during the team’s tenure atop the National League. This year’s champs were the winningest team in the National League, again, but they were by far less healthy and always seemed less touched by October’s strange grace than the Padres and Mets teams that they dispatched to get to the World Series. They dispatched them all the same.

Destiny and grace are great, and great fun while they last, but a team that refuses to make mistakes in the ways that the Dodgers did this October will always have the advantage. It makes sense that the team that took the best at-bats, and which made the most of the outwardly marginal types that fill out even the best and best-compensated lineups, would wind up on top at the end. It makes more sense when that team also has three Hall of Famers at various stages of their prime at the top of its lineup, as the Dodgers do. And yet, until the moment that Walker Buehler—the starting pitcher, same guy who missed two years with arm injuries and who pitched two days ago—got the last out in the bottom of the ninth at Yankee Stadium, it never quite felt sensible, or remotely ordained. All of which is to say that it fit.

It fit that the most unreasonable Dodgers juggernaut of this generation of juggernauts—a team that entered October with something like 60 percent of a starting rotation, no closer, and a first baseman who ran like he was wearing a parking boot—would be the one to finish the job. October is like that, and baseball is like that. It doesn’t make this Dodgers team any less deserving, but it also doesn’t make the far better teams that preceded them any more undeserving. This Dodgers team absolutely earned it, but this World Series was also about the best organization in baseball finally outlasting the inevitable and inexorable deranging effects of October baseball. Just keep getting there, and eventually what happened for the Dodgers in the top of the fifth inning of Game 5 might happen to you. This is true whether you “deserve” to be there or not. Deserve, in October, has got nothing to do with it.

Not having a dog in the fight made this a much more enjoyable experience.

There’s no question in my mind that these are the two most talented teams in baseball. It’s also no surprise that both teams have the highest payrolls in the top ten (with some interesting caveats for Dodger Ohtani). While both dazzled, one team’s flawless execution contrasted sharply with the other’s costly missteps, particularly in Game 5.

franKENstein Creations upscaled the video and cut the whole special to just the KISS parts. He also remixed the songs by taking the music from the original version of Destroyer and then adding live vocals synced to what they were actually performing.

The vocals for “Detroit Rock City” and “King of the Night Time World” were edited to match the show using the Jersey City ‘76 show mostly with a sprinkling of Alive II for a word here or there due to how Paul sang it at that show. The vocals for “Beth” come mostly from Alive II with a few bits of the studio version to match the performance.

I don’t think I saw the original in 1976. At least, I don’t remember seeing it.

On the National Mall in Washington DC last night, a crowd of at least seventy-five thousand supporters gathered to listen to Kamala Harris make her closing argument to the American people.

The night was crisp. The visuals were stunning. She looked presidential.

She said a lot of things last night. Good things. Important things.

But she didn’t say a lot of things.

Jeff Tiedrich, at his Substack, laid them all out.

she didn’t call America a “garbage can.”

she didn’t say that Hitler did some good things, nor did she wish that “her” generals could be more like his.

she didn’t rhapsodize about the enormity of a dead golfer’s dick.

she didn’t misunderstand how tariffs work.

she didn’t tell auto workers that a child could do their jobs.

she didn’t promise to put Bobby McBrainworms in charge of “going wild” on healthcare policy.

she didn’t vow to build massive concentration camps to house the millions of legal immigrants she’s promising to deport.

she didn’t promise to strip naturalized Americans of their citizenship and “remigrate” them back to whatever shithole country they came from.

she didn’t inexplicably decide that she was too tired to finish her speech, and then force her supporters to spend 40 minutes watching her sway like a dipshit to weird-ass music.

she didn’t promise to be a dictator, day one or otherwise.

she didn’t brag about being able to identify a drawing of a camel.

she didn’t threaten to prosecute Google for showing “bad stories” about her.

she didn’t weigh in on whether she’d rather be electrocuted by a boat battery, or eaten by a shark. what are you hiding, Kamala?

she didn’t call January 6th “a beautiful day,” nor did she promise to pardon the insurrectionists who bludgeoned cops with flagpoles and fire extinguishers.

she didn’t fantasize about decapitating a reporter.

she didn’t blither incoherently, and then praise herself for being able to “weave.”

she didn’t brag about ending Roe, nor did she bizarrely claim that “everybody wanted it to happen.”

she didn’t claim that Haitian immigrants are eating dogs and cats.

she didn’t tell any “sir” stories, in which big, strong men break down and blubber like babies over how amazing she is.

she didn’t promise to give the obscenely wealthy another tax cut.

she didn’t vow to imprison reporters, nor did she call for unfriendly media to lose their broadcast licenses.

she didn’t claim that people who don’t support her are “the enemy within.”

she didn’t promise to put the Space Nazi in charge of hollowing out our government.

she didn’t claim that schools are forcing gender-reassignment surgeries upon their students, nor did she insist that immigrants are getting such surgeries for free while in prison.

she didn’t promise to send the US military into American cities and towns, in order to enforce her fascist policies.

she didn’t call for a national day of violence against migrants.

she didn’t claim that her Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden was a “love fest.”

she didn’t tell the survivors of a school shooting to just “get over it.”

she didn’t vow to imprison her political opponents.

she didn’t claim that migrants are “poisoning the blood” of America, nor did she state that “bad genes” are the reason they’re all criminals.

she didn’t tell lies about the fever-swamp fantasy of post-birth abortion.

she didn’t threaten to leave NATO if its member nations fail to cough up the protection money she imagines they owe her.

she didn’t confuse seeking political asylum with an insane asylum — and she failed to mention Hannibal Lecter. not even once.

she didn’t encourage her supporters to beat the shit out of hecklers, nor did she promise to pay the legal bills of anyone who did.

she didn’t promise to shitcan the Department of Education.

she didn’t praise Vlad Putin, nor did she talk about how jealous she is that Kim Jong-un gets to be dictator of his very own country.

she didn’t brag about having “a beautiful body”.

she didn’t compare herself to Elvis.

Randy Rainbow has done it again. This time with a parody of “Xanadu."

Perfect. No notes.

Will Leitch, writing on Medium, has endorsed Kamala Harris for President. He lays out his entire reasoning and then ends with this:

I think this is a good country. I think it can be better. But I do not think it needs to be blown up. I want someone who believes in it, who is dedicated to it, who will do everything in her power to evoke positive change in ways that are rational, sensible and sane. I know that isn’t the most stirring oratory that I could give you. Others can surely do that. I can only come from where I am coming from. If you are a normal person who sincerely believes in this country and wants it to be a place that’s stable, to be place that messes up a lot but does ultimately bend toward justice, to be a place where children can be proud of and someday raise families of their own, you absolutely must vote for Kamala Harris. This is her moment. She has met it. The notion of seeing her in the Oval Office is a deeply inspiring one to imagine. I pray we get to see it.

I might actually pray, too. I already voted, but if praying helps I’ll do it.

Actress Teri Garr, best known for her comedic roles_,_has died at age 79. She worked with several high profile directors including Mel Brooks in Young Frankenstein, Steven Spielberg in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Sydney Pollack in Tootsie.

She had suffered for years with Multiple Sclerosis after being diagnosed with the degenerative disease in 1999. Garr was “surrounded by family and friends” at the time of her death, publicist Heidi Schaeffer told The Hollywood Reporter.

Watchman author, Alan Moore, has a few words about fandom. In the past he’s taken on comic book companies and how they’ve bleed dry every scrap of an idea he’s ever put down in a comic. However, this editorial is a bit different.

Moore paints a portrait of the kind of fan who actually bothers him. He does not pull punches.

An older animal for one thing, with a median age in its late 40s, fed, presumably, by a nostalgia that its energetic predecessor was too young to suffer from. And while the vulgar comic story was originally proffered solely to the working classes, soaring retail prices had precluded any audience save the more affluent; had gentrified a previously bustling and lively cultural slum neighbourhood. This boost in fandom’s age and status possibly explains its current sense of privilege, its tendency to carp and cavil rather than contribute or create. I speak only of comics fandom here, but have gained the impression that this reflexive belligerence – most usually from middle-aged white male conservatives – is now a part of many fan communities. My 14-year-old grandson tells me older Pokémon aficionados can display the same febrile disgruntlement. Is this a case of those unwilling to outgrow childhood enthusiasms, possibly because these anchor them to happier and less complex times, who now feel they should be sole arbiters of their pursuit?

“Reflexive belligerence” is the name of my metal band.

Moore is describing the old gatekeeper’s mentality—the kind of person who sees a hot girl with a Metallica shirt on and who accosts her to name five Metallica songs. These people want their secret society to be secret and only for them. I

I"m not always with Alan on things, but I do agree with him here.

Claudia Dawson, writing in Recommendo, featured an interesting free service.

Messages for Life are short, inspirational emails that have been brightening my days. They arrive only on weekday mornings and always contain a positive message, like reminders to slow down, relax, celebrate yourself, and play. These messages convey a lot of wisdom in a very natural and relatable way. They feel like love letters from the Universe.

I signed up and have been getting these emails. So far, nothing amazing, but they are simple and I have high hopes I’ll get something that really helps.

Heather Cox Richardson, writing on her Substack about the MAGA rally cosplaying as the 1939 Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden, had one particularly notable aside from its headlines:

But Trump perhaps gave away the game with his inflammatory language and with an aside, seemingly aimed at House speaker Johnson. ‘I think with our little secret we are gonna do really well with the House, right? Our little secret is having a big impact, he and I have a secret, we will tell you what it is when the race is over,’ Trump said. It seems possible—probable, even—that Trump was alluding to putting in play the plan his people tried in 2020. That plan was to create enough chaos over the certification of electoral votes in the states to throw the election into the House of Representatives. There, each state delegation gets a single vote, so if the Republicans have control of more states than the Democrats, Trump could pull out a victory even if he had dramatically lost the popular vote. Since he has made virtually no effort to win votes in 2024, this seems his likely plan. But to do that, he needs at least a plausibly close election, or at least to convince his supporters that the election has been stolen from him. Tonight’s rally badly hurt that plan.

I hate making predictions. I hope Pennsylvania is called early for Harris and the rest of the night goes smooth.

The baseball was fun.

So, the LA Times announced it would not make an endorsement for President because the billionaire owner, Patrick Soon-Shiong refused to allow it, leading the editor to resign.

Now, the Washington Post announced it will not endorse a candiate either, reportedly because the billionaire owner Jeff Bezos refused to allow it.

Newspapers making an endorsement are meaningless. Soon-Shiong and Bezos have never heard of the Streisand Effect.

Meanwhile, the Onion’s new owners just made a timely endorsement of Joe Biden.

Will Leitch, writing for New York Magazine, has an interesting take on this year’s World Series matchup.

For all the story lines surrounding the Yankees-Dodgers World Series that begins on Friday night — the fact that the former NYC rivals are playing in their 11th World Series against each other, more than any other pairing; the fact that they have two of the largest payrolls in baseball and are home to the largest media markets; the fact that fans across America love to hate both teams — I wonder if the most important one for baseball is the concentration of boldface superstars the series contains. Chances are that if you asked someone who doesn’t pay close attention to baseball to name all the active players they know, every name they’d list is playing in this series. You want charismatic breakout stars? The World Series has just about all of them.

It starts, of course, with the two men who are going to win the MVP in their respective leagues this year. Ohtani signed his massive — and still, I’d argue, kinda risky? — $700 million contract with the Dodgers in the offseason despite being unable to pitch this year, and he responded with the best offensive season of his career, becoming the first person to put together a 50-50 season with 54 home runs and 59 stolen bases. He is by far the most popular athlete in baseball and, increasingly, one of the most popular in the world: He’s the 13th-highest-paid athlete on the planet, one of only two baseball players in the top 50, with the vast majority of that income coming from global endorsements. (There are estimates that the Dodgers could end up earning $1 billion from Ohtani’s presence.)

And Ohtani didn’t even have the best season among players in this series. You can make a very strong argument that the Yankees’ Aaron Judge just had the best one for a right-handed hitter in MLB history, smashing 58 homers and driving in a career-high 144 RBIs despite the dearth of other good sluggers in the Yankees’ lineup beyond Juan Soto. Both Ohtani and Judge are titans of the sport, the sort of larger-than-life characters baseball hasn’t had since, really, Griffey. Ohtani is so skilled he almost seems supernatural, and Judge, at six-foot-seven, is one of the tallest players in MLB history and certainly the best tall player. They both tower over every other player in the sport, literally and figuratively, and they are both going for their first-ever World Series title. That they are doing so for the two most well-known franchises only further expands their reach. They’d be famous anywhere. But in New York and Los Angeles, they span to the infinite.

And they’re hardly the only stars in this series. In fact, of the players with the sport’s top-selling jerseys this season, four of the top seven are in this World Series: Ohtani (No. 1), Judge (No. 3), Mookie Betts (No. 4), and Soto (No. 7). (Two other Dodgers, Freddie Freeman at No. 18 and Clayton Kershaw at No. 19, made the top 20.) That is unprecedented and a stark contrast with recent history: Last year’s buzzkill of a Fall Classic featured zero players among the top-ten jersey sellers; there was just one in 2022 and one in 2021. You couldn’t get more stars here if you tried.

I kinda hate that he’s right.

Laura Helmuth, writing for Scientific American, explains that Apple experts divide time into “before Honeycrisp” and “after Honeycrisp.”

Honeycrisp inspired consumer demand for excellent tasting apples, and that changed the apple market. “It wasn’t that consumers wanted Red Delicious” back in the day, Bedford says. “They just didn’t have any choice.”

I have not had a Red Delicious in years. I pretty much only eat Honeycrisp now.