A dose of optimism.

How can we keep this autumn Covid surge from becoming a winter catastrophe? "Empiricism and imperfection." / CNN, The Atlantic

In the UK, the resurgence is blamed on lax social distancing and the prime minister’s public health directives. / Vox

The Czech Republic has Europe’s highest rate of coronavirus infection, despite July’s massive “Farewell Covid” party. / NBC News

Cristiano Ronaldo becomes yet another major soccer player to test positive. / ESPN

A dose of optimism: Vaccines and monoclonal antibodies are coming soon, says a surprised coronavirus Cassandra. / The New York Times

Facebook says it will begin rejecting ads globally that discourage people from getting a vaccine. / Facebook

Fauci: Trump’s rapid recovery “amplifies some of that misunderstanding that people have that it’s a benign disease and nobody has anything to worry about.” / STAT

See also: Joakim Drescher’s "Miserable Mildrid," a comic for the coronavirus. / It's Nice That

American voters have cast a total of 13,260,987 ballots so far in the reporting states. / US Elections Project

A three-week drive through Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania finds rampant misinformation and "unlogic." / TIME

The president pleads with a crowd in Pennsylvania: "Suburban women, will you please like me? I saved your damn neighborhood." / CBS News

California officials ask voters to stop disinfecting their mail-in ballots. / KCRA

Related: A state-by-state timeline for how quickly absentee votes are counted. / The New York Times

Among other declinations, Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett refuses to say if Trump can delay the election. The correct answer is he can’t. / Vox

“Five takeaways from Day 2 of Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court hearing.” / The Washington Post

Megan Thee Stallion: “Protect Black women” should not be controversial. / The New York Times

Michigan's Gary Peters becomes the first sitting senator to share his abortion story. / ELLE

An interactive timeline spans across 14 billion years of history, from the Big Bang to 2015. / Histography

"The real robo-sexual revolution will be, and already is, more software than hardware." The sexbotcalypse is coming. / WIRED

In this week's Super Rooster, Roxane Gay discovers a new book to fall head over heels for. / The Tournament of Books


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