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  RIP Patrick Stewart. "Patrick Stewart, who overcame a bleak childhood in England’s coal-mining country to find acclaim as a Shakespearean actor before making an unlikely career pivot in middle age that would bring him his greatest fame, playing a noble starship captain on the TV series “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” died on Wednesday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 86." :starfleet: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/29/arts/television/patrick-stewart-dead.html https://archive.ph/y...

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  Obama turning the tables on the do-nothing outrage-faking snowflakes in the White House. Obama tonight on his Cheesecake Factory line: "They mobilized a whole of government response to that joke. Not to inflation, but to that joke." #UsPol 1/n

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  The Vera C. Rubin Observatory has discovered a new Dwarf Planet candidate in our solar system - 2026 ED138, a large, bright trans-Neptunian object orbiting beyond Pluto. Distance from Sun: ~46 au (1 au is the average distance between the Earth and the Sun. Pluto has an average distance of 40 au) Orbital tilt: 25° Diameter: 600 - 1500 km If confirmed, ED138 would be among the largest dwarf planets ever discovered in this region of the Solar System. https://rubinobservatory.org/news/rubin-first...

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  🔥 🔥🔥 #UsPol 1/n

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  The US-backed hepatitis B vaccine trial in Guinea-Bissau that drew global backlash has been halted. The deeply unethical trial intended to withhold the hepatitis B vaccine from half of 14,000 newborns for their first 6 weeks of life to observe non-specific effects and health outcomes. Almost 1 in 5 adults in Guinea-Bissau carry the virus. On Tue, Guinea-Bissau police raided the offices of the trial and seized all vaccine doses. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/oct/21/us-vaccine-trial-...

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  "Without notice, SpaceX has stopped the ​operation of its military-grade version of Starlink above 100 mph (160 km/h) in Ukraine. A source in Ukraine's defence ministry added that the limitations significantly complicate logistics and some drone ‌operations. Although it was not immediately clear why the Starlink service was throttled, the move comes as Washington pressures Kyiv to halt strikes on Russian oil refineries." https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/spacex-limits-starlink...

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  This looks unreal! Red Sprites above the village of Montemaggiore on the French island of Corsica by photographer Florian Riou on September 28, 2026. Red sprites are electrical discharges that flash high above massive thunderstorm clouds, at altitudes of 50 to 90 km and last but a few milliseconds. The ones here appear quite low. Or perhaps they are much farther behind the houses. More at https://www.instagram.com/florian.riou/?hl=en https://florianriou.com/ 1/n

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  New FCC application from Amazon Leo for a 5,105 satellite LEO constellation to deliver D2D services to mobile devices. Altitude: 510 - 580 km Spectrum: L and S band, acquired in merger with Globalstar. First deployment: 2028 @sundogplanets@mastodon.social https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/27/amazon-satellite-internet-network.html https://fccprod.servicenowservices.com/icfs?id=ibfs_application_summary&number=SAT-LOA-20260601-00224 1/n

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  Post by Mayor Mamdani about ICE shooting in NYC today. "Get ICE out of our neighborhoods. Get ICE out of our hospitals. Get ICE off our streets. Get ICE away from our children. Abolish ICE." From the NYPD: "The NYPD was not involved in the incident and was not on scene at the time of the shooting. The individual who was shot is at a nearby hospital and is currently conscious and receiving medical attention." #UsPol 1/n

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  Oh no! "Margaret Hamilton, a profoundly influential computer scientist best known for leading the software engineering team at MIT during NASA’s Apollo program, died on Sep. 30. She was 90. A computing pioneer who authored over 130 publications, Hamilton helped to establish software engineering as a dedicated discipline." We all remember her from these iconic pictures. https://news.mit.edu/2026/margaret-hamilton-computing-pioneer-dies-1007 https://news.mit.edu/2016/scene-at-mit-mar...

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  Tonight, Saturn is in opposition, located on the same side of the Sun as Earth. It will rise at sunset and be on display all night, its face fully lit by the Sun. For those with access to a telescope, this is what Saturn and its rings will look like tonight. Perhaps, you can spot the edges of the Decagon over the South Pole, as Saturn performs a full rotation every 10 hours and 33 minutes. https://eyes.nasa.gov/apps/solar-system/#/home https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/saturn-flaunts...

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  Trump says ‘I feel badly’ for the accused Cornell gang rapists because ... 'they won't get a fair shake.' Not feeling badly at all for the victims. What did you expect from this cretin convicted of sexual abuse? https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-cornell-rape-investigation-letitia-james-b3060661.html #UsPol 1/n

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  A recently submitted paper claims that the satellite Shijian-25 successfully refueled the BeiDou-2 G7 satellite with 142 kg of room-temp propellant in Feb 2025. Shijian-25 was launched in Jan 2025. In July 2025, it docked with and reportedly supplied fuel to Shijian-21 in geo orbit. That operation was closely watched around the world, including by U.S. spy satellites that flew in for a closer look. This report and its timing looks unreliable. https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/33...

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  Voyager 1 joke by xkcd. Title: Voyager Instruments Title text: Convincing him to turn off the stupid laser show and useless sound system was such a huge ordeal that no one has wanted to do it again. 🤣 Note that Megan , Ponytail, Cueball and Hairy (Greg) are traveling inside Voyager 1 in the cartoon. https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/3302:_Voyager_Instruments 1/n

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  Two asteroids newly named after well-known personalities - 14330 Tomlehrer 14331 Alyankovic 🥳 These asteroids reside in the main Asteroid Belt between Jupiter and Mars. Many more names in this bulletin from the IAU dated 7 September 2026. https://www.wgsbn-iau.org/files/Bulletins/latest.pdf https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/(14330)_Tomlehrer https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/(14331)_Alyankovic 1/n

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  Trailer of Musk, the documentary, scheduled for released theatrically in the U.S. on October 9. Let's share it far and wide. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eY_8SyndC10 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musk_(film) 1/n

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  Supreme Court blocks Trump-backed Missouri congressional map ... for the 3rd time. This republican election engineering attempt was a step too far even for this Supreme Court where 6 members are beholden to the interests of the fascist party. It is small victory for Democracy given that this same SCOTUS ruled today to allow the trump administration to use the revamped federal database for voter screening. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/26a388_q86b.pdf https://www.npr.org/2026/09...

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  David Attenborough: "The nature of human beings is that they'd far rather face the disaster that is happening tonight than the one that is happening tomorrow." https://worldartutopia.com/new-street-art-with-portraits-creatures-and-wild-letters-20-photos-vol-62/ 1/n

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  NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope by the numbers: # of orbits: 200,000 on Sept. 19, 2026 Orbital period: ~95 minutes Years in orbit: 36.33 Distance traveled: > 8 billion km Observations: > 1.7 million Data archive: 477 TB Peer-reviewed science papers: > 23,000 # of spacewalkers who serviced Hubble: 17 🧑‍🚀 👏 https://science.nasa.gov/missions/hubble/nasas-hubble-seeks-lensed-supernova-marks-200000-orbits/ 1/n

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  Winner of the Ig Nobel Prize in Physics - "We propose novel urinal designs that were generated by solving differential equations derived from the isogonal curve problem to ensure the urine stream impacts at or below this critical angle. Experiments validate that these designs can substantially reduce splashback to only 1.4% of the splash of a common contemporary commercial urinal." Winning designs: Nautilus and Cornucopia. 💦 🤔 https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/4/4/pgaf087/80...

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  The difference between Democrats and Republicans - who they serve. https://bsky.app/profile/mayor.nyc.gov/post/3mw4v5x5owc2o #UsPol 1/n

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  Hurricane Polo, off the west coast of Mexico, is now a Cat 5 hurricane. It exploded from 40 mph to 160 mph in just 36 hours, thanks to extra warm ocean waters, light wind shear, abundant moisture and yes, climate change. Expected to strengthen to 175 mph in the next 12 hours. https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/refresh/graphics_ep2+shtml/221155.shtml?cone#contents 1/n

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  Massive air-traffic disruption in NY area airports, bleeding into other airports. Cause: A primary circuit connecting airports failed, which "led to the discovery of a backup fiber circuit which had been damaged by construction crews in New Jersey." The 600 ft cut will take 13+ hours to fix. We all periodically test backup systems, right? https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c6j9xpgl8pzwt 1/n

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  Researchers have discovered that the vertebrate brain does not arise from a single progenitor cell, but instead develops from two distinct, mutually exclusive cell lineages that evolved independently, one for the forebrain and midbrain, and one for the hindbrain. It explains why attempts to coax forebrain precursors into hindbrain tissue have failed. The team successfully cultivated human hindbrain neurons in the lab for the first time. https://neurosciencenews.com/brain-separate-organs-evolut...

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  Check out this thread from last year and some interesting discussion on the origins of Fortran, which was first demonstrated OTD in 1954. https://fosstodon.org/@AkaSci/115238670324947940 1/n

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  OTD in 1954, John Backus and his team at IBM successfully ran the first FORTRAN (Formula Translation) program. The spec for the language was developed during 1954 and published on Nov 10, 1954. A Programmer's Reference Manual was published on October 15, 1956. The compiler was developed in 1955-56 and released in early 1957. We presume, on Sep 20, 1954, the program was manually converted to machine language and executed on an IBM 704. https://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/FORTRA...

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  Ominous developments: Trump cuts short trip to Camp David, returns to White House. Netanyahu cuts short U.S. tour, returning to Tel Aviv. Middle East US embassies issue STEP alert warning to Americans in the region. Yemen’s Houthis attack sites across Saudi Arabia. Saudis preparing "massive" response to Houthi attacks. Iran conveyed conditions for ending the war through Qatari mediators. Or this could just be TACO. https://www.rawstory.com/trump-iran-2677895263/ https://www.aljazeer...

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  CA Governor Newsom signs a flurry of bills to protect Californians from the hyenas in the White House. 1. New law prohibiting other state militaries from entering California unless they have explicit permission from the Governor. https://bsky.app/profile/govpressoffice.gov.ca.gov/post/3mvuwq6llks2u https://www.gov.ca.gov/2026/09/19/governor-newsom-signs-bill-to-protect-californias-sovereignty-and-guard-against-unauthorized-military-deployments/ #UsPol 1/n

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  Pluto's tenuous atmosphere will likely collapse as it moves further away from the Sun in its elliptical 248-year orbit and atmospheric Nitrogen freezes and rains down on the surface. Pluto's atmosphere is created by sublimation of frozen Nitrogen on its surface when it gets closer to the Sun. Atmospheric pressure is ~10 microbars, much lower than that on earth (1 bar). Surface temperature -223 to -240 °C. https://eos.org/articles/plutos-atmosphere-may-be-collapsing #Science 1/n

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  I missed this report that SpaceX has decided to retire the Crew Dragon spacecraft, the only American spacecraft capable of ferrying astronauts to/from the ISS; SpaceX wants to focus its energy on Starship (and orbital data centers) NASA is now looking at revving up the Boeing Starliner program, providing additional funding to fix some of its problems. So much for commercialization of space technology. https://gizmodo.com/spacex-is-retiring-crew-dragon-forcing-nasa-to-bet-big-on-boeings-troubl...