Alan Boyle

Pope Leo: "War can never be waged in the name of God. For us believers, to fight in the name of religion means attacking religion itself. There is no such thing as a holy war: only peace is holy." www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news...

An atheist requested a "religious accommodation" to refuse AI at work—and his university agreed. David Durman says generative AI conflicts with his Humanist beliefs. Kudos to @americanhumanist.bsky.social for making it happen! www.friendlyatheist.com/p/atheist-wi...

Now on @sciam.bsky.social: OpenAI just dropped more earth-shattering AI-generated math results. But two of them coincided with almost identical work by Anthropic. The ongoing “slop drop” continues to stagger and frustrate experts across math, physics, and computer science.

Behold: The US Defense Intelligence Agency has released a report on challenges to security in space, including an NEI image of China’s spaceplane from Maxar, taken in 2024.

Our team is putting out articles faster than I can promote them. Here’s our latest, from yesterday afternoon, anticipating how the betting markets might contribute to rumoring in this cycle.

We have new artificial intelligence guidelines on Stylebook Online, informed by the AP's own policies on what we do and don't do with AI.

Ancient DNA connects teeth in a cave offering to people buried in faraway elite tombs. Learn more: https://scim.ag/4iqNWFs

Reported by Eric Berger back in June and now apparently confirmed by Anatoliy Zak and others, the leaky ISS Zvezda PRK and aft hatch area are declared permanently 'out of order'. Progress ships will dock at a side port to deliver cargo, and then redock at the Zvezda port for orbit reboosts.

Melania’s snub and the Oval Office trap for bishops: what’s wrong between Trump and the Vatican www.repubblica.it/en/europe/ne...

Deadass Mad Max-style landscape photography coming down from Mars today

I met with the defence ministers of France, Germany, Italy, Poland and the United Kingdom in Paris today for talks on support for Ukraine, European defence and the conflicts in the Middle East. There is a new diplomatic push for peace in Ukraine, but Putin's actions tell a different story.

On #NationalPumpkinDay, learn more about how pumpkin, squash, and gourds would likely have gone the way of the dodo were it not for humans domesticating them. https://scim.ag/4ihMdBV

“My Catholic Latina opponent wants to impose Sharia Law” is a hilariously desperate closing message. thehill.com/homenews/617...

An unstoppable air leak on the ISS' Zvezda module forces permanent closure of its compartment, in turn requiring redocking of all future Russian cargo ships between two ports for cargo delivery and orbit corrections. DETAILS: russianspaceweb.com/2026.html#36

My heart is heavy. Walter Koenig, our Ensign Pavel Chekov, passed away early today. Walter and I met on the bridge of the Enterprise in the 1960s, and we stayed friends for nearly six decades. When Brad and I married in 2008, Walter stood beside us as our best man.

Pope Leo XIV expresses joy and enthusiasm about his upcoming Apostolic Journey to Latin America, as the Holy See Press Office confirms his visit to Uruguay, Argentina, and Peru on November 6-17. www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news...

Washington resident Paige Adamson, 61, was stopped at the border and questioned about her voting history. Weeks later she skipped a doctor visit. Then she died.

As I've said, this is either an impeachable offense that Democrats act on or it's a new precedent.

New ELT milestone 🥳 The massive altitude structure of our ELT was tilted for the first time in October 2026. 📹 ESO/Cimolai 🔭 🧪

1,500-year-old pre-Inca burial contains a high-status toddler ‪—‬ but the grave goods are puzzling www.livescience.com/archaeology/...

My latest for National Geographic looks at the 131 new Hittite cuneiform tablets unearthed at Šamuḫa (c. 1400 BCE) & what they tell us about everything from augury to an epidemic that killed Hittite children. Thx to @digkabri.bsky.social, Theo van den Hout, @knpazuzu.bsky.social & ISAC for aid. 🪏

This week’s main story is about how more and more white nationalists, antisemites, and Nazi sympathizers seem to be integrating into the Republican Party, how some of them are currently running for office, and how old you can be for JD Vance to consider you “a very young boy.”

Under Lulu, Amazon deforestation rates have been plummeting—by 41%. The planet won tonight. www.bbc.com/news/article...

How long does it take to travel through the Universe at 1g? If you had a spacecraft that could continuously accelerate at 1g forever, you could reach anywhere within the observable Universe. A one-way trip would take just 25 years, max. bigthink.com/starts-with-... #space #astro #physics

This drives me CRAZY. I grew up playing sports w/ boys. I played on a U12 boys select soccer team, b4 switching to a U12 girls team that kept beating us. Nobody had any issue with any of it. Youth sports have never had the strict sex/gender boundaries that “XX-XY” activists are now trying to defend.

great context on the serbia news here -- gift link, no paywall: www.nytimes.com/2026/10/21/o...

Check out how easy this is.

West Bank…

The Heritage Foundation adviser who recruited 12 bishops to pray over Trump in the Oval Office claimed a Ph.D. from an Italian university that doesn’t grant doctorates. His listed bachelor’s school is a high school. A Vatican official called the meeting an insult to Pope Leo XIV.

We’re here to ensure you have all the information and resources you need to get out the vote. Call our voter protection hotline if you have any questions or concerns: 206-309-8683

Happy Cosmic Halloween! 👻 🌌

conservatives in washington state want freedom and small government in the form of state-mandated genital exams for high school students: www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

After many obstacles were placed in her way, including by the Trump administration, the leader of the Venezuelan democratic opposition is back in Venezuela

A week after ProPublica published an investigation that found $470 million in SNAP benefits were stolen from Americans last year alone, the Trump administration announced a new rule to add microchips, which are more secure, to EBT cards.

AOC Tidies Up In Case Federal Agents Stop By For Raid

Am finally turning my attention towards the satellite-shadowing intrigue currently going on in LEO. Russia’s Kosmos-2612 satellite recently passed < a few hundred meters from ICEYE-X36, a Finnish-American satellite providing intelligence imagery to Ukraine. S2s systems documented the approach:

Christopher Hale: Archbishop Jeffrey Grob of Milwaukee apologized on Sunday for praying over President Trump in the Oval Office last week, and he accused the White House of posting video of the prayer without the bishops’ consent

Punk Rock band #Turnstile hosted a massive free benefit concert around the corner from the White House to raise money for humanitarian aid for #Sudan, #Lebanon and #Palestine. An estimated 60,000 people showed up. ⁣ More people showed up than any of Trump's events in DC. 🤪

"The poltergeist-level door-slamming is a wasted effort as well. At this point, every time a door creaks open or slams shut, I assume it’s another volunteer trying to get me to vote for the local school board race." buff.ly/YqIjeHr

Humdinger of a speech - it did bring tears to my eyes to hear someone actually speaking in a presidential way.

Something I wish more people would realize.

Even a whiff of AI money seems to disgust voters. trib.al/9Ey3g9O

In an interview, Vladimir Putin cited eugenetics to declare that Russians and Ukrainians are “one people,” denied the existence of a Ukrainian nation, and reiterated that Ukraine was simply part of Russia, saying: “I think that it is not their territory but the historical territory of Russia.”

“He’s got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened up a Cheesecake Factory” — Obama

New in PN: In defense of empathy "Being aware of other people’s feelings, sensitive to them, and able to put yourself in another person’s shoes is pretty much essential for humans to function as a community. But the current conservative project has zero room for that sort of thing."