The Dodgers won the World Series. That's right, 2020, just get it all out of your system... Aside from the chagrin of this SF Giants fan, the World Series, played inside baseball's version of a bubble (Big League Chew?), concluded in the most 2020 way possible—short of one side trying to cheat and then lying about the result and then refusing to leave the field after the contest was over. Somehow, a Covid-19 test for Justin Turner (Dodger Third Baseman and, one assumes, Game of Thrones extra) came back positive during the game. Hence, Turner was pulled from the lineup before the eighth inning. Not 2020 enough for you? Well, Justin Turner later returned to the field, where (occasionally maskless) he celebrated with his teammates. Hopefully, they were draft Dodgers as well, because something infectious was in the air. Put simply, Justin Turner's enthusiasm was contagious. Jeff Passan in ESPN: "In this oddest of years, this most peculiar of baseball seasons, there was perhaps no more telling snapshot of the United States, circa 2020, than a COVID-19-positive man sitting on the ground, maskless, next to a cancer survivor, maskless as well, with indelible grins spread across their faces. Sports is and always will be a metaphor for society." (All that said, and even with the Dodgers winning a championship, I do have one message for baseball during a year when we really needed the distraction. Thanks.)

+ And even this lifelong Dodgers hater feels pretty damn good that Clayton Kershaw won the big one. Here's a look back at Wright Thompson's piece as the season was about to begin. As Clayton Kershaw waits for baseball to return, a look at his family, legacy and future.

"Ted Cruz yelled. His Democratic colleague Brian Schatz called the hearing in which he was speaking 'a sham.' Committee chair Roger Wicker couldn't pronounce the last name of Google's CEO. Just another day on Capitol Hill for Big Tech ... Though the hearing was meant to focus on a crucial law, known as Section 230, that protects the companies' ability to moderate content as they see fit, Senators strayed from the brief and confronted the executives on other topics, including antitrust and election interference." Actually, Brian Schatz had it just about right. On one side you had the mega tech companies responsible for allowing disinformation to fester. On the other side, you had GOP lawmakers who want make sure that disinformation continues unabated, especially for the next week. As Danielle Keats Citron explains: Senate Republicans don't want answers from the CEOs of Facebook, Google, and Twitter. They want to cow them. (Hey, if the moo fits...)

+ It was like the rubes vs the pubes.

Voting has become so politicized. I don't mean who you vote for. I mean getting your vote counted. How crazy is it that an American president actually slowed down the mail service and we're covering it like it's just part of the whole Trump gestalt? We have a very good idea that if the vote is fair and all ballots get counted, Biden will win by a comfortable margin. Yet, we have no idea who's going to actually win. Think about that. And while you're thinking, let's look at one example of a mail slowdown, that just happens to be in a swing state. "In Philadelphia, 42% of all first-class mail is taking longer than five days to be delivered. For comparison, that figure was 33% two weeks ago and just 13% in January, before a series of changes handed down by the Trump administration led to a national slowdown."

+ Judge orders USPS to reverse mail collection limits now. Yes, now would be good. Before would have been better.

+ "In September, Facebook received a strongly worded letter signed by the secretaries of state of Alabama, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, and West Virginia, asking the company to discontinue its Voting Information Center." Six secretaries of state tried to stop Facebook's effort to register millions of voters. (Vote for people who want you to vote.)

+ "It's worth highlighting these mistakes, not just to set the record straight but also to show how Kavanaugh uses falsehoods to twist the law against voting rights." Let's Count All the Errors and Lies in Brett Kavanaugh's Defense of Voter Suppression.

+ Can one headline explain America's ridiculousness? Probably not. But this one sure makes a solid effort. Michigan Judge Blocks Ban On Open Carry Of Guns At Polls On Election Day.

"In Florida, election officials say there's a good chance that they will have the overwhelming majority of ballots counted by midnight on November 3rd. And while pollsters believe that Biden can plausibly win the Presidency without winning Florida's twenty-nine electoral votes, they are confident that President Donald Trump cannot." Dexter Filkins in The New Yorker: Will Florida Decide the Presidential Race or Throw It Into Confusion? In other words, things will go quite smoothly on election night just as long as we can count on FLORIDA ... man.

"In a taped interview on April 18, Kushner told legendary journalist Bob Woodward that Trump was ‘getting the country back from the doctors' in what he called a ‘negotiated settlement.' Kushner also proclaimed that the US was moving swiftly through the ‘panic phase' and ‘pain phase' of the pandemic and that the country was at the ‘beginning of the comeback phase.' 'That doesn't mean there's not still a lot of pain and there won't be pain for a while, but that basically was, we've now put out rules to get back to work,' Kushner said. ‘Trump's now back in charge. It's not the doctors.'" (A week later, Trump advised us to drink disinfectant.) Kushner bragged about Trump cutting doctors out of coronavirus response.

"As jails and prisons cut their inmate populations amid the COVID-19 pandemic, some communities seized a chance to amend long-entrenched policies that make the U.S. the world's incarceration capital. The changes could free some suspects who die before getting their day in court." America's inmate population fell by 170,000 amid COVID. Some see a chance to undo mass incarceration.

"'I was hesitant to try it — like, hey, is this legal?' said Dr. Shawn Ryan, the chief medical officer and president of BrightView Health, an addiction treatment provider with locations throughout Ohio, which started using contingency management last year. But the results have been striking, he said, adding, 'I'm talking about significant improvements in attendance to therapy sessions, significant reductions in drug and alcohol use.'" NYT: This Addiction Treatment Works. Why Is It So Underused? What's the treatment? Cash and prizes for staying clean.

"Disgraced self-improvement guru Keith Raniere, whose NXIVM followers included millionaires and Hollywood actors, was sentenced to 120 years on Tuesday for turning some adherents into sex slaves branded with his initials and sexually abusing a 15-year-old."

"Novak's home holds a horror show. In his M Street yard, one dummy lies with his head pulverized, one lies with a scale where his or her head used to be, and a few more lie in bloodied trash bags fallen off a wheelbarrow. All the while, in the window of the house, a zombie horde attempts to break out." You know a guy takes Halloween decorations pretty far when passersby call the cops to report a crime.

"We wondered if it was possible to identify Trump and Biden voters based on what's inside their refrigerators, on the theory it might say something about our similarities and our assumptions about one another. So we teamed up with Lucid, an online survey platform, to ask a representative sample of U.S. residents whom they're planning to vote for — and whether they'd open their refrigerators and take a picture of the contents. Hundreds did." And now you can take the quiz at the NYT. (The chopped up body parts in the freezer are always a dead giveaway...)

+ Some eye-popping animal photographs from the National Wildlife Photo Contest.

+ This is a pretty impressive pumpkin carving job.