The Electoral College has voted, and with no surprises, as of 16:37 Chicago time Joe Biden has received the requisite 270 votes to be elected President of the United States. And yet, we had a few surprises today:
- The loathsome STBXPOTUS fired his almost-equally-loathsome Attorney General, Bill Barr, which could not have happened to a better couple.
- The US passed 300,000 Covid-19 deaths today. Probably 250,000 could have been prevented.
- Security guru Bruce Schneier advocates for regulation of persuasion technologies.
- A man in Peoria, Ill., impersonated a property owner to have an artist paint a Cookie Monster mural. The real property owner did not find this amusing.
Finally, John le Carré died at 89 yesterday. Time to revisit Josephine Livingstone's review of "the glorious return of George Smiley," le Carré's 2017 novel A Legacy of Spies.