Events

North Carolina's polls are about to close. So it's now time to open my live blog. 18:30 CST: As the first polls close, we've got Indiana and Kentucky for Trump, Vermont for Clinton. No surprises there. Other states "too close to call." 18:33: First (minor) disappointment: The Times calls Ohio Senate for Portman. 18:37: Interesting. The Times is calling West Virginia for Trump, as expected; but Talking Points Memo calls it for Clinton and Ohio for Strickland. Oh, my, tonight will be a l19ong won....

Here are the states I'm watching closely tonight, and the times their polls close. The biggest ones are all around 7pm Chicago time, just over 4½ hours from now. 18:30 CST/19:30 EST North Carolina, 15 votes, Republican Senate seat: Hillary Clinton* is polling dead-even, and so is Democratic Senate candidate Deborah Ross. It's not a make-or-break state for the presidency but it would be a huge pick-up in the Senate if Ross beats incumbent Republican Richard Burr. 19:00 CST/20:00 EST Illinois, 22 votes...

The Weather Channel has the forecasts for battleground states in one convenient location: Today is Election Day, and you may be wondering, not only what conditions will be like as you head out to the polls, but also whether the weather may factor in the battle for control of Senate, not to mention the presidency. A 2012 poll commissioned by The Weather Company found weather can have a game-changing effect on turnout in a close election, with party affiliation and demographics key factors. Possibly Wet...

Welp, I voted, and now I'm getting in to the office only an hour late. Nothing left to do but wait until 7pm Chicago time when the first big batch of polls close, including ours in Illinois.

A diver off the coast of British Columbia appears to have found a 66-year-old atomic bomb casing: The Canadian navy will be heading to the coast of British Columbia to investigate claims that a diver may have come across “the lost nuke” – a Mark IV bomb that went missing after an American B-36 bomber crashed in the region during the cold war. Smyrichinsky started asking around, curious if anyone else had ever come across the mysterious object. “Nobody had ever seen it before or heard of it. Nobody ever...

For those of us in the northern hemisphere in places that observe daylight savings time on U.S. rules—that is, for most of the U.S. and Canada—this morning's sunrise was (or will be, west of the Rockies) the latest sunrise until 6 November 2027. I've got to say, the sun rising around 7:30 has not helped my mornings. Tonight we return to standard time, putting tomorrow's sunrise at 6:30, and making it easier to get out of bed Monday morning. Of course, from Decmeber 1st to February 4th, the sun will rise...

Excellent:

You couldn't script the game better: tied at 6 going into the 9th, then the 10th, then a rain delay, then a 2-run homer top of 10 followed by a nail-biting run and out to end the game. The Cubs won the World Series for the first time in 108 years. And Chicago went nuts. There are, as you can imagine, a ton of stories about it. The best I thought came from the Guardian, but of course the Chicago Tribune, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the New York Times, the Atlantic, and Chicago Public Media all had things...

Before discussing the most important sports story in North America since...well, since the States were United, let me highlight some of the political and professional stories percolating: The Economist has endorsed Hillary Clinton for President. "This choice is not hard." Meanwhile, the High Court in London ruled today that Parliament must actually vote to trigger Brexit, which gives MPs another crack at the piñata and perhaps a way out. No telling when Teresa May plans to schedule this vote as the UK...

I'm having trouble typing these words: The Cubs have won the World Series. I'm sure I'll have more to say later. But: the Cubs have won the World Series. Where do you go from there? A woman president, maybe? Holy fuck. I hope against all the evidence I see that 2016 isn't the best year of my life. And I will sweat day and night to ensure this is merely the landing on the staircase. Meanwhile, my neighborhood is all sirens and shouting, so...I'll leave the wordsmithing until later. But the Cubs have won...