It's All Greek to Me

Election Prediction-ish, Refunds Without Returns

“The path to Salvation is as narrow and as difficult to walk as a razor's edge." —W. Somerset Maugham

For no particular reason, we'll begin in ancient Greece where the foundation for Western civilization was laid, and where Plato first heard this famous quote from Socrates: "True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing." This adage stands in stark contrast to today's Internet age where everyone knows everything and when one could easily imagine a CNN segment featuring panelists explaining what Socrates actually meant (with, of course, equal time given to both sides). I can honestly say that I've never felt more Socratic than I do right now (and it's not just because I always wear a toga to my polling place). I know nothing. How could Trump have won in 2016? Search me. How could any of his enablers continue to fuel his power grab after the dictator worship, fascist leanings, Jan 6 insurrection, criminal indictments, the Big Lie, the countless little lies, and his continued refusal to express a willingness to respect the vote? What can I say, it's all Greek to me. Michelle Obama asked the question of an era during one of her rally speeches: "Why on earth is this race even close?" My answer? Picture Socrates doing a shrug emoji. If there's a prognosticator I relate to, it's Tom Ellison in McSweeney's Based on Our Election Forecast, We Are 100 Percent Sure Anything Could F-cking Happen. I don't get any of it. So when people ask me for my prediction, I give the same answer Clubber Lang gave when asked for a prediction for his upcoming fight against the most famous of all swing-state fictional residents, Rocky Balboa: "Prediction? Pain." After spending years (yes, folks, it's been years) reading about this, thinking about this, writing about this, and at times adopting the fetal position and crying about this, I predict this election will hurt. My hammies are tight, my head aches, my stomach is in knots, and I can feel the throbbing of every injury I've incurred since elementary school.

For months, we've been told this race is incredibly close. So I will offer this one hot take: In a close race, it's got to count for something that one side is running the worst closing campaign in modern history while the other side is hitting on all cylinders. Just in the past few days, while Kamala has given pitch-perfect, on message, star-studded, and decidedly uncrazy speeches from the Ellipse to the swing states, Trump suggested that he shouldn’t have left the White House after Biden won, mused about reporters being shot, imagined Liz Cheney in front of a firing squad, said he'd protect women "whether they like it or not," forgotten which state he was in, and simulated microphone fellatio. In short, as Michael Tomasky suggests in TNR, Donald Trump Has Lost His Sh-t. Yes, it's true that Trump has lost plenty of sh-t over the past decade and it didn't seem to lose him many votes. But I have my own Socratic-esque quote that I've always believed in: Momentum is everything. It's true in sports. It's true in life. And it's true in politics. And as we approach decision day, Kamala Harris has the momentum. She has closed better. Women are voting in huge numbers. Late deciders appear to be leaning Dem. Kamala got a promising poll out of ... Iowa. A highly respected pollster shows her ahead of Trump 47% to 44% among likely Iowa voters. At the risk of being accused of being on an Iowasca trip, I'm not predicting a win for Harris in Iowa. But this certainly adds to the momentum case and it builds more confidence than your candidate already laying the groundwork to dispute the election results – again. Will the momentum be enough? Am I being deceived by what I'm seeing in my own bubble? Well, let me briefly step out of my own perspective on what matters in politics and step directly into the world of what matters to Donald Trump. Crowd size. NYT (Gift Article): Trump’s Crowds Are Dwindling as His Campaign Winds Down. You can see it in this CNN report. "For 9 years we talked about the enthusiasm and the masses that have come out for Trump rallies. But interestingly, in this final week we have seen far smaller crowds." Will this momentum we can see and feel matter? I really think it will. But I probably thought something similar before the 2016 election, too

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2

Ruthless People

"At the end of June, in the afterglow of a debate performance that would ultimately prompt President Joe Biden to end his campaign for reelection, Donald Trump startled his aides by announcing that he’d come up with a new nickname for his opponent. 'The guy’s a retard. He’s retarded. I think that’s what I’ll start calling him,' Trump declared aboard his campaign plane, en route to a rally that evening, according to three people who heard him make the remarks: 'Retarded Joe Biden.'" Tim Alberta gives you an inside look at The Ruthless, Restless Final Days of Trump’s Campaign.

+ The craziness will continue through Tuesday and beyond. "Election deniers have in recent years developed a rapid-response system for amplifying rumors or exaggerating the impact of real voting irregularities, creating the impression of widespread voting fraud that is not backed up by the facts." WaPo (Gift Article): Four years after ‘Stop the Steal,’ an organized army emerges online. "The fringe group that tried to subvert Donald Trump’s 2020 loss has spent years preparing to contest the 2024 vote. This time, Elon Musk is on their side." (Here's an election prediction: When the dust clears, if Trump loses, exit polls will show Elon was a net negative for the Trump campaign.)

+ Elon Musk’s misleading election claims have been viewed more than 2 billion times on X, analysis finds.

+ "According to an analysis of fema data, some twenty million Americans are actively preparing for cataclysm—roughly twice as many as in 2017. Political violence, including the spectre of civil war, is one of the reasons. A recent study conducted by researchers at U.C. Davis concluded that one in three adults in the U.S., including up to half of Republicans, feel that violence is 'usually or always justified' to advance certain political objectives (say, returning Trump to the White House). " Charles Bethea in The New Yorker: The Americans Prepping for a Second Civil War. (Sometimes it looks more like a continuation of the first one...)

+ And, as if you needed another sad reminder of what this monster and his enablers have done to American politics, there's this: Fencing erected at White House, Harris' residence ahead of Election Day. And from 60 Minutes: Why Georgia election officials say voters can trust the process in 2024. (Some poll workers have to wear lanyards with emergency buttons because they have faced so many threats.)

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The Point of No Return

At most big online retailers, it's pretty easy to get a refund on a product you don't want. Sometimes, you don't even have to return the product to get one. Many retailers offer ‘returnless refunds.’ Just don’t expect them to talk much about it. (Maybe it was better back in the Breaking Away days when salespeople knew how to deal with returns.)

4

Curative

"Lupus, doctors like to say, affects no two patients the same. The disease causes the immune system to go rogue in a way that can strike virtually any organ in the body, but when and where is maddeningly elusive. One patient might have lesions on the face, likened to wolf bites by the 13th-century physician who gave lupus its name. Another patient might have kidney failure. Another, fluid around the lungs. What doctors can say to every patient, though, is that they will have lupus for the rest of their life. The origins of autoimmune diseases like it are often mysterious, and an immune system that sees the body it inhabits as an enemy will never completely relax. Lupus cannot be cured. No autoimmune disease can be cured." But there is a new treatment that could be upending that reality. Sarah Zhang in The Atlantic (Gift Article): A ‘Crazy’ Idea for Treating Autoimmune Diseases Might Actually Work.

+ Related: The Cure has a new album that's getting great reviews.

+ "Jennifer Doudna, one of the inventors of the breakthrough gene-editing tool CRISPR, says the technology will help the world grapple with the growing risks of climate change by delivering crops and animals better suited to hotter, drier, wetter, or weirder conditions." James Temple: How a breakthrough gene-editing tool will help the world cope with climate change.

5

Extra, Extra

Big D Energy: "Democracy is at once everywhere and nowhere—on the lips of the masses calling for freedom and fearing for its safeguarding, while every day asking the question: What even is democracy? Starting in 2018, that is the question the Our Democracy team—me along with photographer Andrea Bruce and educator and videographer Lorraine Ustaris—set out to answer. Our starting point wasn’t simple, but it was frank. We would travel cross-country to see how Americans live and hear what they say democracy looks like in their daily lives." MoJo: Searching for Democracy and Finding America.

+ Days and Confused: Iceland embraced a shorter work week. Here’s how it turned out. "Iceland’s economy is outperforming most European peers after the nationwide introduction of a shorter working week with no loss in pay."

+ Running in Place: Exercise in a pill: have scientists really found a drug that’s as good for you as a 10km run? (If they have, can I break it half and start with two 5Ks and work my way up?)

+ Quincy: "Quincy Jones, the musical giant who did it all as a record producer, film composer, multi-genre artist, entertainment executive and humanitarian, has died. He was 91." He had one of the most successful careers in music. It's a good time to watch the documentary on Jones co-directed by his daughter Rashida Jones: Quincy. Also worth a watch: The Greatest Night in Pop. Or the night Quincy Jones pulled together a massive collection of stars for We Are the World.

+ I Can't Come to the Phone Right Now: A loudmouth football fan found out the difference between spouting nonsense online vs in real life. Jason Kelce smashes phone of fan who directed anti-gay slur at brother Travis.

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Bottom of the News

Kamala Harris got all publicity after her appearance on SNL, but the gameshow featuring Tim Kaine totally killed.

+ Strava artist-athletes are painting San Francisco streets with their legs.