It's three weeks after election day and Joe Biden has won the presidency once again. After endless lawsuits, conspiracy theories, and overt attempts to overturn the election, President Trump finally relented (a little), and Emily Murphy, head of the General Services Administration, said in a letter to President-elect Joe Biden that her office is ready to begin the formal presidential transition. Was it the remarkably embarrassing court appearances? The sludge leaking from Rudy Giulianis temples? Or, more likely, the corporate chorus of CEOs who had seen enough and even discussed withholding campaign donations from the two Republican Senate candidates in Georgia (which is the political version of threatening to cut off a child's allowance)? Whatever it was, the letter (which read like it was a response to a cross examination) was sent and the transition has officially started. Here's what that means. (If nothing else, these past four years have given us all a very uncivilized civics lesson. Who knew we were gonna get a three week lesson on the machinery and machinations of the GSA?)

+ While the move by the GSA means the transition is underway, some things will not change. The president will continue to spend his days watching cable news and Tweeting falsehoods that make it seem like he can still win what he has called a rigged election. NYT Upshot: "In the three weeks since Election Day, President Trump's most visible presence has been on Twitter. Since Nov. 3, he has posted some 550 tweets — about three-quarters of which attempted to undermine the integrity of the 2020 election results."

Joe Biden is filling out his cabinet picks. Former Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen would be the first woman to lead the Treasury Dept. Alejandro Mayorkas will be the first Latino and first immigrant to head the Department of Homeland Security. Avril Haines will be the first female Director of National Intelligence.

"The computer mixes and shuffles scores of facts from the medical records — age, marital status, diagnoses, prescriptions — and settles on the factors that together are most strongly associated with suicide risk. The V.A. model integrates 61 factors in all, including some that are not obvious, like arthritis and statin use, and produces a composite score for each person. Those who score at the very top of the range — the top 0.1 percentage — are flagged as high risk." Benedict Carey in the NYT: Can an Algorithm Prevent Suicide? (The headline is a little misleading. The real question is whether data can accurately identify those most at risk. It's a strategy that's already being used in other areas of health care.)

AP: Thanksgiving could make or break US coronavirus response. "As governors and mayors grapple with an out-of-control pandemic, they are ratcheting up mask mandates and imposing restrictions on small indoor gatherings, which have been blamed for accelerating the spread of the coronavirus. But while such measures carry the weight of law, they are, in practical terms, unenforceable, and officials are banking on voluntary compliance instead. Good luck with that." We sort of already know how this holiday season is going to turn out. NPR: Millions Of Americans Traveling For Thanksgiving, Ignoring CDC Advice, and the TSA just recorded its busiest travel weekend since March. (This could be the first Thanksgiving when you'd be better off being a turkey.)

+ "Now it's not having to contemplate a world without Thanksgiving and Hanukkah and Christmas: it's having to contemplate a world without one Thanksgiving and one Hanukkah and one Christmas. Then, all signs indicate that, sometime next winter or spring, a pharmacist will stick a needle in your arm (twice), and things will start slowly returning to normal—and our job is to get through to that singular event." The New Yorker: Thanksgiving, the Coronavirus, and the Marshmallow Test. (If you pass this marshmallow test by spending Thanksgiving with fewer people, you actually get more marshmallows right away and you live to eat Marshmallows next year. Who could ask for smore?)

NYT: Roiled by Election, Facebook Struggles to Balance Civility and Growth. "The change was part of the 'break glass' plans Facebook had spent months developing for the aftermath of a contested election. It resulted in a spike in visibility for big, mainstream publishers like CNN, The New York Times and NPR, while posts from highly engaged hyperpartisan pages, such as Breitbart and Occupy Democrats, became less visible, the employees said." It's always nice to mix in a little nonfiction.

"The forces propelling online shopping were set in motion long before the pandemic. But charting the decline of many brick-and-mortar stores and the simultaneous growth of e-commerce in the past seven months is like watching the industry's evolution, and its impact on the broader economy, on fast forward. In the future, 2020 will be seen as a major inflection point for retail." NYT: As Customers Move Online, So Does the Holiday Shopping Season. (Or, why your favorite mall is turning into a distribution center.)

"Most people told me that they wouldn't eat at just any restaurant; they'd have to see 'precautions' in place. Peoples' desired precautions ranged from the waitstaff wearing masks to air purifiers to seeing tables spaced apart with partitions separating them. One couple told me, charmingly, that during the pandemic they will eat only in restaurants they are already 'familiar with,' as though knowing your way around a menu can protect you from an invisible virus." Long story short: Don't Eat Inside a Restaurant.

"If the Justice Department plan moves forward, 13 people will have faced death by lethal injection during the Trump administration. Legal experts who follow capital punishment said that would be the most since the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who served 12 years in office before his death in 1945." NPR: U.S. To Continue Executions Through Transition In Break With Precedent.

"The New York Post reported that guests, mostly unmasked, crammed inside the Yetev Lev temple in Williamsburg for the Nov. 8 wedding of Yoel Teitelbaum, a grandson of Satmar Grand Rabbi Aaron Teitelbaum, in blatant violation of coronavirus restrictions that ban large indoor gatherings. The synagogue has a capacity of 7,000 people." Cuomo: Massive Orthodox wedding in Brooklyn disrespectful. (A 7K person Jewish wedding gives new meaning to the phrase, In case of emergency break glass...)

"I was pleasantly surprised by all three of these wines. They met a lot of my qualifications, which includes, taste, aromas, complexity, as well as finish. So if I were to say bring something that was less expensive to my friends but from California, I would go with The Collection." Need a cheap holiday wine? A sommelier rated 11 low-cost wines. TLDR: Head to Target.

+ Jeopardy! record-holder Ken Jennings will be the first in a series of interim hosts replacing Alex Trebek when the show resumes production next Monday.

+ 15 Moving Facts About Planes, Trains and Automobiles. (Watching this movie is as close as you should come to traveling this weekend.)