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A nussy is what you think it is.
A nussy is what you think it is. Photo by Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images

"No Merit": A Pennsylvania appellate court denied the Trump campaign's attempt to block the state from certifying that Joe Biden won its election. "Voters, not lawyers, choose the President. Ballots, not briefs, decide elections," wrote one of the judges on the panel. Meanwhile, the current President continues his racist conspiracy campaign to disenfranchise Black voters:

A weird food read for the weekend: This guy went on a quest to find the original McDonald's french fry recipe.

Amazon's averaged around 1,400 new hires per day: Terrific reporting from Karen Weise reveals Amazon's "extraordinary hiring binge" this year. Mike Baker breaks down the big bulletpoints in this tweet:

I guess we can't resist it any longer: It's officially that time of year.

Although the thing I'm in the mood for is Slag Wars, baby: Smooth-brained excellence right here.

An incomplete list of new Seattle-area permanent restaurant closures: Boat Street Kitchen, Barça, No Bones Beach Club, Bar Sue, El Diablo Coffee Co., Steelhead Diner, and many more.

My household made way too much food for Thanksgiving: I really overestimated my house's ability to eat because we cooked brisket, roasted ham, mashed potatoes, buko pie, pumpkin flan, macaroni and cheese, Brussel sprouts, stuffing... for three people. I'd offer you some of my ten tubs of leftover mashed potatoes, but we should keep our distance. This holiday excess is not confined to me: it looks like people are rushing to buy Christmas trees.

Are you thinking about buying the gamers in your life a new device? Geekwire has a useful holiday gaming gift guide.

Canada PM Justin Trudeau thinks "most" Canadians will get a coronavirus vaccine by September: He made the comment during a press conference this afternoon. U.S. Doc Fauci has said an American vaccine could be ready for "all" Americans by April.

Some officials have claimed we could be back to our "normal" lives by May: That's probably bullshit. As your armchair doctor, I'd suggest you put off all hope for "normal" life until well into 2021. Probably 2022.

In Britain, officials attempt to swab every person in Liverpool for coronavirus: The mass coronavirus testing pilot has so far been a success: "Nearly 1,000 people who hadn’t known they were infected had tested positive and are 'self-isolating and not spreading the virus.' Prime Minister Boris Johnson said mass testing in Liverpool contributed to a 'very substantial' fall in infections and was a 'success story we want other parts of the country to replicate.'"

Nursing homes suffer the brunt of America's Covid deaths: Roughly 40 percent of U.S. Covid-19 fatalities have happened in nursing homes or long-term care facilities. Check out this new feature from WaPo for an in-depth read on how government incentives left the nursing home business vulnerable:

Stringent infection control, which might have kept the coronavirus at bay, has never been a revenue producer, even now during the pandemic. Similarly, there is no monetary incentive to hire more registered nurses, although studies suggest they have been crucial in minimizing covid-19 casualties in nursing homes.

[...]

The fee-for-service structure that takes care of more than a million mostly elderly Americans puts the focus on the 'ancillary' treatments that bring in extra dollars, and one consequence is that employees who handle general care of residents—nursing assistants, primarily—rather than the specialty services are a low priority for operators. They are underpaid and in chronically short supply at nursing homes across the country.

We could all use a little refresher on which masks are best and how to wear them: "The CDC recommends face coverings made of two or more layers. A good option for the general public are surgical masks more easily found than N95 respirators," writes Ryan Blethen at the Seattle Times.